Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT (MANCHESTER AIRPORT)

11.0 a.m.

Mr. Alfred Morris: (by Private Notice)asked the President of the Board of Trade if he would make a statement about the air crash at Manchester Airport yesterday involving the deaths of three persons.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. William Rodgers): A Viscount aircraft, GAVJA, belonging to British Midland Airways, crashed at Manchester Airport at 16.58 B.S.T. yesterday. The aircraft was making a flight in the course of which pilot training was taking place during the take-off. The aircraft made a normal take-off and lifted off in level flight. At about 50 ft., it yawed to the right with the wings level and then started to roll to the right. When in a nearly vertical bank, it appeared to sideslip to the ground. The right wing tipped, and then the nose hit the ground. The aircraft crashed upside down. The fire and rescue services, which had been alerted because of the training exercise, extracted the three bodies from the aircraft before it caught fire. The one survivor is in hospital.
An Inspector's investigation was initiated in the early hours of this morning, and a report will be issued in due course.
I am sure that the House will wish to join with me in expresisng sympathy with the relatives and friends of those who died and also with the survivor.

Mr. Morris: I join with my hon. Friend in expressing very deep sympathy with the relatives of those concerned in this second disaster in the Greater Manchester area involving a British Midland aircraft. I also share the nation's relief at the merciful survival of Miss Timson.
Is my hon. Friend satisfied that the disaster in no way reflects on the very

high standards of safety and other arrangements at Manchester Airport? Is he also satisfied that what has happened—in particular, the use of this type of aircraft—does not imply any future danger for the many thousands of people living in the immediate vicinity of Manchester Airport? Finally, when does he expect the inquiry's report, and will he be asking British Midland to discontinue using or to ground some of their arcraft pending the outcome of the inquiry?

Mr. Rodgers: On present evidence, there is no reason to suppose that the arrangements at Manchester Airport are in any way defective. On the contrary, for the reasons that I mention, the fire services were alerted and took very prompt action.
As for the aircraft itself, although there have been a number of accidents to Viscounts, we should not fail to recognise that there are a very large number flying. But, obviously, if the inquiry shows that there are special factors in this case, action will be taken.
Reports take some time to prepare because of the need for extensive inquiries into the causes of accidents. But, as I think my hon. Friend knows, in the event of any information coming to light at an earlier stage, action will be taken at once, whatever it may be.
I think that it is much too soon to place the responsibility for the accident either on the aircraft or on anyone else. Here again, if the evidence shows that it is necessary to ground any aircraft, this will be done.

Mr. Corfield: I know that my right hon. and hon. Friends would wish to be associated with the expressions of sympathy to the friends and relatives of those concerned, and of course, we appreciate that it is much too early to ask the hon. Gentleman to give us any real indication as to the basic causes of this accident.
Will he bear in mind the importance of making an announcement as soon as possible if it becomes clear that the aeroplane was not in itself at fault, in view of the inevitable anxiety as a result of what I think is the fourth Viscount crash within a relatively short time?

Mr. Rodgers: Yes. I think that the hon. Gentleman indicates that on these sort of occasions it cuts both ways. If there is a real cause for anxiety action must be taken, but the travelling public must know as soon as possible if there is not.

Mr. Oakes: I should like to associate myself with my hon. Friend's expresssion of sympathy to the relatives of those who were killed in the crash.
Did I understand my hon. Friend to say that this aircraft was on a training flight of take-off and landing? Does he consider it advisable that training flights of take-off and landing should be carried out at an airport in a major conurbation such as Manchester?

Mr. Rodgers: The flight as a whole was not a training flight, but an exercise in training was taking place at the time of take off. My hon. Friend raises an interesting point which I will certainly bear in mind.

Mr. Rankin: Could my hon. Friend say whether this type of Viscount is in general passenger service? If so, will he consider it wise to ground them in the interests of safety?

Mr. Rodgers: It would be premature to jump to conclusions about what the

cause of the crash may have been. This particular aircraft was built in 1958 and is Series 815. Very large numbers of them are flying in many parts of the world and have given exceedingly good service. If there is evidence of some weakness which might be common to other aircraft flying, we shall take the necessary steps. But let us not be too presumptuous at the moment, because it might make people more anxious than they need be.

Mr. Ellis: Does my hon. Friend agree that a disturbing aspect of this matter is the fact that it has been widely reported that there was a message on take-off that the pilot had engine trouble? This is very disturbing, indeed. While not expecting my hon. Friend to comment at this time, will he draw this to the attention of the Inspector, because it needs looking into?

Mr. Rodgers: Yes. This certainly should be looked into. I have heard of this report that one of the engines was heard to wind down, although the pro-pellor was not seen to be feathered. This is the kind of question which will be looked into. We know that it might be due to any one of a number of causes. That is why I think we should await the Inspector's preliminary report before drawing conclusions.

Orders of the Day — EMPLOYER'S LIABILITY (DEFECTIVE EQUIPMENT) BILL

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

11.13 a.m.

Mr. Speaker: I have posted up, as is my wont, my selection of Amendments. I suggest to the House that we take with new Clause 1 the promoter's own Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 12, Clause 1, leave out from beginning to end of line 15 and insert:
'the injury shall be deemed to be also attributable to negligence on the part of the employer (whether or not he is liable in respect of the injury apart from this subsection),'.
If necessary, I shall put each of these separately at the end of the debate.

New Clause 1

LIABILITY FOR NEGLIGENCE

For all purposes connected with or arising in or from a claim by an employee or by the personal representatives or the dependants of an employee who has died against his employer or the personal representatives of an employer who has died the liability of the employer created by this Act shall be deemed to be and shall be treated as if it were a liability for negligence and all the consequences flowing from and the incidents attaching to a right to or liabiliity for damages for negligence whether by Statute or at Common Law shall attach to a right to or liability for damages arising under this Act.—[Mr. Holland.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Philip Holland: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The new Clause is designed to meet the objections of hon. Members opposite to certain words in Clause 1 as it now stands.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) very courteously sent me a brief setting out in some detail the legal opinion which supported him in opposing the Amendment that we carried in Committee to place, as Clause 1 now does, absolute liability on the employer for damages in respect of an injury sustained as the result of a latent defect in equipment and so obviate the need to declare an employer guilty of negligence

in circumstances in which he could not possibly have been negligent.
Having studied the brief that the hon. Gentleman sent me, I am willing to agree that he may have some grounds for his misgivings about the implications of the Clause as it now stands.
But lawyers do not live on Mount Olympus, descending from time to time with the tablets of the law in one hand and a divine guarantee of infallibility in the other. There is nothing absolute about learned counsel or their opinions. Indeed, it may surprise some hon. Members to know that during the passage of the Bill it has not been completely unknown for hon. and learned Members to differ on the meaning of words—particularly the meaning of the word "deemed".
Hon. Members on both sides of the House will, I hope, agree that we have consistently pressed our opposition to what we regard as an objectionable feature of the Bill, as it was, on Second Reading, but at the same time we have made constructive attempts to provide a solution that will in no way dilute the purpose of the Bill. Therefore, acknowledging that hon. Gentlemen opposite have very serious misgivings about the implications of the words in Clause 1, to which I have referred, we are trying to meet their objections by moving the new Clause.
All the Clause does is to say that in law the employer's liability shall be exactly as if he had been guilty of negligence even though the circumstances were such that he could not possibly have been negligent.
In conjunction with the present wording of Clause 1 in lines 12 to 15 on page 1, the new Clause is an attempt to meet a very real objection to the Bill as originally drafted without in any degree varying the employer's liability in the courts.
I think it is appropriate for me at this point to pay a warm tribute to those employers with whom we have been in contact who have raised no substantial objection to the purpose of a Bill which is designed to weight the law heavily against them. They accept this as a new responsibility. Nevertheless—and it is understandable—they find it a little difficult to understand why it was necessary for them to be condemned of negligence when they have not been negligent.


I hope: that the sponsors of the Bill and the Solicitor-General will not obstruct the passage of the new Clause merely because of some illogical determination to allow no further change in the form of words in the Bill.
The new Clause is introduced—I want to reiterate this—only because of objections to our desire to obviate the necessity for declaring an innocent person guilty.
If it is felt that the drafting of the new Clause could be improved by Parliamentary draftsmen—though, with the high respect that I have for my hon. and learned Friend who drafted it, I doubt it—then I suggest that this could be done when the Bill goes to another place. On those grounds, the new Clause could be accepted now.
But, drafting apart, there can be no valid objection from hon. Members opposite to what the new Clause says. I cannot be sure that the same applies to hon. Members on this side, particularly those who have been more vociferous than I in promoting objections to the principle of declaring an innocent man guilty.
The new Clause is designed to try to help hon. Members opposite to overcome their objections to our genuinely felt desire, which has been expressed throughout the passage of the Bill.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: It might be for the convenience of the House if, at this stage, I moved my Amendment——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member may talk about it but not move it at this stage. We can have only one Motion formally before the House at once.

Mr. Brown: However, discussion on the Amendment is relevant because it covers the point that has been spoken to by the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Holland).
The hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) is not here this morning, for reasons of which I have been informed. I understand that he is engaged on Parliamentary business. However, he has been the most active on what has been the main point at issue on Second Reading and in Committee.
I welcome the remarks of the hon. Member for Carlton. I have always taken the view that most what I might call progressive employers understand that this is not the creation of a new law but the transfer of one to them. I appreciate the concern that it does not, from a commonsense point of view, or from a legal point of view, seem right to deem somebody to be guilty of something of which he is innocent, and in ordinary criminal language we would all take offence at that. But we argued this fairly thoroughly, the matter was properly explained, and I do not think that any offence can be taken. Having lost the Amendment in Committee—if that is the right way of putting it—what I am now suggesting is that we should restore the Bill to its original form, with the addition of the word "also", which makes it clear that we are not trying to say that somebody is guilty when he is not.
I agree that this is basically a technical argument, and that the question is: what is the proper form of the principal Clause? As has been made clear, there is no question of substance or policy in the point under discussion. It is a technical matter, but it is of considerable importance to the Bill, because unless we get this right there is a real danger that it will create confusion and unnecessary litigation. I suppose that with any Bill, and certainly with one relating to this delicate and sensitive area of accidents and disablements, it is almost inevitable that there will be some litigation.
The history of the matter is that when the Bill was originally introduced Clause 1 provided that if an employee was injured by defective equipment, in the appropriate circumstances the injury should be
deemed to be attributable to negligence on the part of the employer.
This formula of "deemed negligence" was disliked by some hon. Members. I think that everyone who spoke, certainly from the benches opposite, raised objections to it on the ground that it was distasteful to create the fiction that an employer had been negligent when he had not. To be fair to myself I must say that I made it clear all the way through that I did not share that opinion and concern. But, because some of my


hon. Friends had doubts about it in Committee, and because on that day we were a bit thin on the ground, I agreed to look at the matter again. The matter was, of course, discussed subsequently on the Question "That the Clause stand part of the Bill".
The original formula of "deemed negligence" was not used without reason. As everybody knows—and I think it is as well to make this clear—the Bill had been given a Second Reading, albeit a brief one, and had been considered in Committee. There had been ample opportunity for the advisers on the Bill to examine it properly. In other words, it was not left to me as a layman, or to the hon. Gentleman, to draft what we thought was the best wording for the Bill. It was only after careful study that that was regarded as the only safe way to operate this part of the law without danger of injustice to employers or anybody else.
I ask hon. Members to appreciate that the wording of the Bill is an attempt to take care of precisely the point which has been made without running into the danger of doing injustice to employers and all concerned. It is necessary—and this is now common ground—to ensure that all the legal incidents and rules connected with liability in tort, and no others, shall attach to the liability of employers, and this is particularly necessary in the interests of employers.
The fact that the hon. and learned Member for Southport and his hon. Friends have tabled this new Clause in the words used suggests to me that there is agreement, at least in principle, that there is no escape from the need to provide that liability of employers under the Bill must be deemed to be liability in negligence. I have no doubt that we shall discuss this at some length. The use of the phrase "liability for negligence" in the new Clause suggests that this has been accepted.
That being so, it is necessary to go into the details of the various legal incidents concerned. They are connected with the general nature of liability in damages, contributory negligence, Crown proceedings, contributions between tort-feasors, limitation—or what is known in Scotland as "time bar"—and the Fatal Accidents Acts. I am not competent to

put forward the various legal and technical arguments on this matter about the general nature of liability, damages, and so on. I think I must leave this to be dealt with by the Solicitor-General.
The matter has been examined, and it appears that the hon. and learned Member for Southport accepts that there must be a "deeming" provision. The word "deemed" is used in the new Clause. Thus, the only question is which is the better way to do this—the hon. and learned Gentleman's method of leaving Clause 1 in its amended form and tacking on a new Clause, or my method of restoring the Bill to its original form, with the addition of the word "also". Having looked carefully and sympathetically at the new Clause, I have come to the conclusion that it is not acceptable.
If the Clause were accepted, the basic lay-out of the Bill would be as follows. Clause 1 would provide that where an employee was injured in certain circumstances, then, notwithstanding the fact that the employer was not negligent, he should be liable in damages to the employee. The Clause would then provide that this liability should "for all purposes" be treated as if it were a liability in negligence. In principle this is the same as saying in Clause 1, as my Amendment suggests, that the employee's injury shall be deemed to be attributable to the negligence of the employer, except—and I agree that to some extent this might be a matter of opinion—that that is clumsier and more confusing.
Moreover, the method suggested in the Clause involves unnecessary dangers. I appreciate that I am straying into the difficult area of liability and negligence. It mixes two concepts, the concept of liability in damages without more, and the concept of liability in negligence. This can only serve to create confusion and loopholes when the Bill has to be interpreted by the courts. The concept of "liability in damages" without more is probably not known to our law. It means little or nothing without the crutch sought to be provided by the Clause. I think it was recognised in Committee that something else needed to be done, and this has been done by the new Clause.
It is dangerous to try to specify, as the Clause does, the circumstances in


which the claim of the employee may ensure for the benefit of others. This may serve one day to cast doubt on the nature of the liability created by Clause 1. It may be dangerous to say that the employer shall be deemed to be liable in negligence for all purposes," and even I do not say that. Furthermore, the Clause does nothing to put right the uncertainties created by the present amended form of Clause 1, in particular the fallacy of purporting to create a liability. The purpose of the Bill is to provide that if a third party is liable to the employee, then, and only then, will the employer be liable as a joint tortfeasor.
11.30 a.m.
Finally—and I say this with great respect—the whole pattern proposed by the new Clause is a little illogical and confusing. If, as is now agreed, there must be a "deeming" provision—I think this is the crux of the argument in deeming someone to be something that, in fact, he is not, and everybody has recognised this—it is surely right to put it in the principal Clause and make it the basis of the employer's liability. That is what my Amendment does. It puts the Bill back into exactly the same form in which it was when it was introduced, with the exception, which I have already mentioned, of the inclusion of the word "also". That Amendment was not moved in Committee. It fell because a previous Amendment had been accepted.
The purpose of adding the word "also" is to make clear beyond doubt that the employer's liability under the Bill is not exclusive. He shares liability only with the third party who was actually at fault. It is essential to make this point clear for the protection of the employer. The new Clause does not make it as clear as my Amendment does. It is simple, neat and safe, and I go further and suggest that it is the only proper form.
There is no question of libelling employers by using this form of drafting. There is no question of saying that an employer was negligent when he was not. Of course, the Bill as such does not and cannot apply if an employer was negligent, for that situation would be covered in other ways. All that the Bill does—admittedly, the new Clause tries to do this, too—is to say that in

certain circumstances an employer shall be treated as a tortfeasor in the tort of negligence. It is now pretty well agreed on all sides that this has got to be done. With all due modesty, because the expert advice has really come from my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General and from some of my other hon. Friends, I suggest that this is the right way of doing it and that the new Clause is the wrong way.
We have had a fairly long discussion on this point. I am of the opinion that no employer need worry about this. I think it would be true to say that if an accident claim were brought against a big employer, such as I.C.I. or Ford, even though it involved a high level of legal argument, the impact of the reputation of the firm would be nil. It would be a minor legal case. Therefore, damage, assumed or real, to anybody's personal reputation would not arise. I am not sure what the position might be with the smaller employer, but I should think that in the minds of laymen like myself, because Press reports do not cover these cases very fully—one would need to consult something like a legal journal—it would loosely be dismissed as another accident case.
I do not think this is a serious reflection on the personal character and integrity of an employer, small or large, although I can appreciate the indignation felt by some progressive employer who would say "Yes, I agree with the general principle of the Bill, but I do not see why I should be called something that I am not." This is like rather like the prices and incomes legislation; it has not been properly understood.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: It is too well understood.

Mr. Brown: No, I beg to disagree, despite what is happening with the electricians in Scotland.
I do not think that anybody having had an explanation of what is meant by this Amendment would quarrel with the interpretation which we all know to be the right one of the words "deemed negligence ". Therefore, I hope the House will reject the new Clause and will approve my Amendment when we reach it.

Sir Edward Brown: No one doubts the sincerity of the hon. Member


for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown). All we really want to do is to get a good Bill. We succeeded in Committee upstairs in carrying an Amendment which we thought would put the Bill right, but now we find that the hon. Member for Provan has an Amendment which seeks to restore the Bill to its original form. This, I think, is the only quarrel between the two sides of the House.
I ought to reiterate—I said this very strongly in Committee—that we cannot have a situation in this country in which the basic principle of English law, whether criminal or civil, is breached. It is no use hon. Members opposite smiling; this is a serious point. The basis of English law is that a man is innocent until he has been proved guilty.

Mr. Gordon Oakes: The hon. Member and the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Holland) insist on using these words "innocent" and "guilty ". We are dealing with civil law. Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that if a driver employed by a haulage contractor is involved in an accident which is due to his negligence the employer is liable in civil law? He is not considered guilty, but he is liable for an act or omission of his servant during the course of his employment.

Sir E. Brown: I appreciate the point, but according to this Bill there is no question of any action before an employer is to be found guilty. He is guilty by this very Bill. He is tried and he is covered by the Bill by the words "deemed to be", whether or not he is negligent. It was to remove this awkwardness from the Bill that the Amendment was accepted in Committee upstairs.
We now find that we have another words in this Amendment, namely "also", It raises a number of questions in my mind. Suppose that an employee is wholly responsible for his own accident. We know that the employer cannot by any means be held responsible if it is wholly the employee's fault. The word "also" could join the employer in an action resulting from such an accident. The Amendment includes the words:
…shall be deemed to be also…

In Committee even the lawyers could not find agreement amongst themselves on this point. We are only laymen. We represent constituents who may well ask us to explain this particular passage. I shall be able to give the interpretation of my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Provan will give his interpretation which he will have received from the Solicitor-General.

Mr. Peter Archer: Will the hon. Gentleman explain how, if an employee is wholly responsible for his own accident, the event can be attributable wholly or in part to a third party? That is not a lawyer's point. It is common sense.

Sir E. Brown: But the words of the Amendment are that,
the injury shall be deemed to be also attributable to negligence on the part of the employer "—
and so on. It says nothing about third parties, merely that it shall be also attributable to negligence on the part of the employer. I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is a lawyer. I am a layman, and I have to represent my constituents. They will come to me and ask my opinion about it. Have I to go to my lawyer or to the Government lawyers for a correct interpretation, or must we wait until we have a case in court?
I accept that the new Clause does not exactly meet the situation, but my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Mr. Holland) offered to the Solicitor-General and the promoter of the Bill that, if they wished to look at the matter in the light of our general view on this side, following the Amendment in Committee, they could put it right in another place. That is the right spirit and intention. We do not oppose the Bill, but we want a good Bill.
After seeing the Amendment this morning, I am almost tempted to ask my hon. Friend to allow us to divide on the issue. We must have the point right. We must never have it put on the Statute Book that a man is guilty until he is so proved, but the Amendment would make him guilty, although innocent, and that is what we strongly oppose.

Mr. David Weitzman: The original words in the Bill were:
the injury shall be deemed to be attributable to negligence on the part of the employer


(whether or not he is liable in respect of the injury apart from this subsection)…
For those words there were substituted in Committee the words:
then notwithstanding the fact that there was no negligence on the part of the employer and whether or not he is liable in respect of the said injury apart from this subsection the employer shall be liable in damages…
and so on. The reason advanced for the deletion of the original words and for the substitution of those new words was that we should make the employer morally guilty of something of which he was not guilty. There was, in effect, no other objection. In order to cure what was regarded as a moral objection of that kind, cumbersome words were inserted which, so it was suggested, would put the matter correctly.
The first point to remember is that the original words
deemed to be attributable to negligence
clearly showed or implied that he was not guilty in any sense of blameworthiness but was for the purposes of the Clause deemed to be guilty. With respect to hon. Members opposite, it seems to me that they made a great song about a difficulty which did not exist. They are now trying to put words into the Clause which would make the thing more cumbersome, without adding anything of value and without assisting the matter at all.
Apart from that objection to the insertion of these words, there were other objections advanced, and the very fact of the new Clause now before us recognises the force of the objections which we advanced in Committee.

Mr. Holland: I made no secret of that when I spoke. I said that by the new Clause we recognised the real objections which had been raised in Committee.

11.45 a.m.

Mr. Weitzman: I am obliged. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman will recall that there was a great battle in Committee about the insertion of these words. The learned Solicitor-General pointed out the objections. I pointed out the objections. Hon. Members opposite made light of those objections and said that they were not real. That is how the matter went, as the hon. Gentleman will find if he re-reads the OFFICIAL REPORT of our proceedings.
For example, I drew attention to the words "contributory negligence" and the difficulty which would be created in that respect. More than that, the Solicitor-General put the other matters clearly to the Committee. He told us that the question had been carefully considered during the Christmas Recess, and he went on:
The reason is that putting the cause of action formally in the category of negligence clearly gives the desired result, both for England and Scotland, in connection with many collateral matters—in connection with such matters as contribution, contributory negligence, limitation, right of surviving dependants to sue, the forms of existing statute law dealing with Crown proceedings and the Armed Forces, and legislation dealing with foreign torts and a large number of legal incidents which need to be attached to the employer's liability under the Bill. In these cases the use of the expression 'negligence' is a desirable and, in our assessment, a necessary treatment of the matter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C, 22nd January, 1969; c. 69.]
That was cogent reasoning, advanced after the most careful consideration and supported by other hon. Members—I supported it strongly myself—against the inclusion of words such as those proposed. Now it is recognised that we were right in our objections, and in an effort to cure them a long new Clause is introduced. There is no need for that long Clause. There is no need for the words which were inserted in Committee. The original words in the Bill put the matter simply and correctly in law. In the circumstances, the new Clause should be rejected and, when we come to that stage, the original words should be restored.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) on two counts, first, on the fact that we have reached this stage with the Bill, and second, on the speech which he made a few minutes ago. If the hon. Gentleman continues to make speeches of that kind, with an obvious ability to equal any of the lawyers, he will soon find himself on the Front Bench in one of the legal jobs.
We had an interesting Committee stage. As one who succeeded in inducing the hon. Member for Provan to accept an Amendment, I am somewhat reluctant now to dispute with him on this matter, but I feel that we are justified in disputing. He lost the point in Standing


Committee. Obviously, there was some negligence somewhere, since we won the Division. True, we had a long debate, but the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends lost, so we are perfectly justified in coming back now with a new Clause in an effort to repersuade them that the defeat which they suffered in Committee was a just defeat.
I agreed with a good deal that my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Sir E. Brown) said, but I disagreed with him to some extent on one point, a point which in itself justifies our exercise in Committee. Putting in "also" does help, and this justifies the line we took, because if we had not won that Division the hon. Gentleman would not have needed to look at the matter again. Having done so, presumably after discussion with his hon. and learned Friend, he has decided that he could improve the Clause.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: I do not want to spoil the hon. Gentleman's approach to the question, but I had an Amendment down to include "also" in Committee. It fell because of the carrying of the Amendment to which he has just referred.

Mr. Lewis: I had forgotten that, but as we won that Division the hon. Gentleman might not have had enough of his supporters there to vote for the Amendment he mentions. But I think that "also" is an improvement.
What worries most of us laymen is that we recognise that "negligence" is really a legal term, and both sides have been arguing that the employers should not be charged with negligence. The other side has said all the time that they are not really charged with negligence, and that it is a necessary term. However, it is a pity we could not get another. The courts are not permitted to look at anything we say here, even when it is said by Front Bench spokesmen, whether on the Floor of the House or in Committee during the passage of a Bill, or in comment afterwards.

Mr. Weitzman: That is just as well.

Mr. Lewis: The hon. and learned Gentleman is entirely right. I can think of numbers of things said by Ministers about Bills which would affect them

if they were taken seriously. The only way to change the law is to bring in another Bill or amend the existing Act.
As the Bill stands, employers are at a disadvantage in the public relations sense. They will get the odium of publicity in the Press which says that they have been negligent, when they might not have been, or when the negligence is what I term stand-off negligence. By that I mean that it is not something they have done but something done by somebody else with whom they have been in association, or even by somebody else further away—somebody who has been associated with an associate of theirs. The liability can bounce back on the employer from a considerable distance.
This is right, because both sides want to help the employee. That is why we too want the Bill. If we took the line that the buck stops with the employer and does not go on to those with whom he is associated we would not help the employee. We want the employee to get the full compensation that may be due to him as a result of something that has happened, which may have been affected by the employer or someone connected with him.
The unfortunate thing is that the word "negligence", without any explanation, can lead to the employer's suffering in his own locality—and even nationally, if he is a big employer—because the Press does not read our debates but will simply look at the Bill and give him an unfortunate headline. I think that I said this in Committee, and I do not want to over-elaborate the point, but this could also be to the disadvantage of the employee, because the employer might therefore decided to fight the case when he might otherwise have settled. He might think, "If I am to be charged with negligence perhaps it will be better to go to court and make a song and dance about it in order to explain myself." There might be expensive and lengthy proceedings, which would not be to the advantage of the employee. They could be costly to him or to the trade union or whoever is supporting him.
If the hon. Gentleman is not prepared to accept our new Clause or another new Clause it is inevitable that the Bill will go through as he wishes, because we do not oppose it. But it is a pity that the


lawyers cannot find some means by which the word "negligence" does not bite home quite so much. I think that it does bite home, and it has an unfortunate effect on someone who may be a perfectly good employer, wishing to do the best he can for his employees.
Having said that, I nevertheless hope that the Bill will go through and will have all the advantages that the hon. Gentleman wants it to have.

Mr. Archer: I should like to take issue with the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) on a remark that he made in parenthesis. I am not sure that I approve of the rule that the courts are obliged to shut their eyes to everything said in the House. I can think of a number of legal judgments which might have been illuminated and graced by the sturdy common sense of the hon. Gentleman. There may be occasions when the court would be a little puzzled by the proceedings of the House, and there are certainly occasions when the general public is puzzled.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is an interesting line to follow, but not in this debate.

Mr. Archer: I am obliged for your guidance. Mr. Speaker. I was hoping to come very quickly to the argument with which we are concerned. But, if I may say so, there must be occasions when the public is puzzled by the proceedings of the House, and I was about to venture to suggest that this must be one of them. The whole debate has arisen from the fact that hon. Members opposite introduced in Committee an Amendment the case for which I understood to be that it would not make a scrap of difference to the effect of the Bill. It cannot be often that we find ourselves in the rather curious situation where the strong point of the supporters of an Amendment is that it will not make any difference to the Bill.

Mr. Holland: It would not make any difference to the general purpose of the Bill. That is vastly different from saying that it would not make any difference to the Bill. It changed the objectionable principle in the Bill without making any difference to its general purpose and aim.

Mr. Archer: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman, who has expressed the case fairly, as usual. I have not overlooked the argument advanced. The point made was that the Amendment would not affect the legal effect of the Bill, that though it might make a difference to the Bill's reception in certain quarters, the Bill would emerge precisely the same. Then it was pointed out by some of my hon. Friends that it might indeed make a difference to the effect of the Bill. So now we have from the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Holland) a further Amendment to ensure that the Bill shall have precisely the same effect as it would have had if his original Amendment had never been made.

Mr. Holland: indicated dissent.

Mr. Archer: The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but I understand that that is precisely what he said when he moved it.

Mr. Holland: I am sorry to keep interrupting the hon. Gentleman, but I want to keep the record straight. I thought that I had made it clear that we introduced the new Clause to meet some of the objections of hon. Members opposite to the new wording of the Clause after it had been amended by us in Committee, but not to change it back to the original form.

Mr. Archer: Indeed. But the objections were precisely that the Amendment might affect the sense of the Bill. We all agreed that we wanted to have the effect of the Bill as it was originally introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown). Then hon. Members opposite introduced an Amendment in Committee for the reasons which the hon. Gentleman has very fairly put forward, but with the very clear reservation that it would not affect the legal effect of the Bill in any way. Then it was pointed out that it might do so, and therefore we have a further Amendment from him and his hon. Friends to restore to the Bill precisely the same legal effect as it would have had, to cut the same ice as it would have cut, had they never introduced their original Amendment. That will take a great deal of explaining to my constituents when they ask what we have been doing over the last few weeks.
12 noon.
As I see it, this is part of what is becoming a general trend—the trend that it does not really matter what one does because what counts is how one labels it. What is more important than discussing which course we are going to take is finding a formula—a formula that will not upset anyone, that will keep everyone happy—and at the end of it all that line usually fails in any event and only succeeds in drawing attention to difficulties which would otherwise have virtually passed unnoticed.
When the original Amendment was introduced in Committee my reaction was, "If it does not do harm and makes the Opposition happy, let them have it." I approve of making people happy. If we could spend our time making the Opposition happy it would be time well spent. If the matter had been left like that it would have been all right, but it has become clear that there are arguments the other way. As has been said, the fact that the hon. Gentleman now, quite properly, moved his Amendment makes it clear that he accepts, as the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford accepts, that the Amendment produced in Committee will have an effect on the legal application of the Bill, and that might be a serious matter.
Now we are trying to repair the damage by a somewhat cumbrous Amendment which may at the end of the day not effect its purpose. As the hon. Member for Carlton said lawyers do not descend from Mount Olympus carrying infallible tablets, and when we introduce an Amendment purely to make people a little happier and then introduce another to neutralise it, we shall almost inevitably find that at the end of the day we have overlooked something rather important. Already there was a danger of overlooking the effect—and this is the purpose of the new Clause—on the transmission of a cause of action on death and a number of other legal consequences. Is it worth the risk of overlooking something vital, of producing another heyday for lawyers? This is an open invitation to lawyers to argue about it at great length when we could have produced the same result with something clear in the first place.
Of course, we should look at the possibility of damage suggested by hon. Members opposite. Whatever may be the psychological consequences of using the word "deemed", everyone knows what it means. To say that one "deems" something to have happened means that one behaves as though something has happened when it did not really happen. I do not believe that an employer will toss and turn in bed at night worrying because of an injustice done to him when he has been deemed guilty of negligence. If he misunderstands the position, it can be explained by his solicitor. I do not believe that there will be anything in the local newspaper which will produce strikes and riots in the town because a local employer has been deemed guilty of negligence. This is a song and dance about nothing. It is an attempt to find a formula which is unnecessary in the first instance and it would introduce a complication which the House may well regret.

Sir Brandon Rhys Williams: The Committee stage of this Bill was quite an agreeable experience in the cordiality with which the objective of the Bill was greeted by every hon. Member serving on it. I have been delighted to have been associated in a small way with this short but useful Bill. I hope that it will complete its passage quickly and successfully. To me, it is a Bill about personnel management and conditions of employment rather than about definitions of liability and the purely legal aspects of the circumstances which arise after an accident has taken place. It is admittedly only a small step forward towards better relations in places of work but it is a genuine step, and I, too, congratulate the promoter, particularly on the agreeable and competent manner with which he has handled the Bill from the beginning. There has been, however, some risk that the Bill might turn into a battleground for lawyers and, indeed, even today possibly there have been some clouds over our discussion because of the difficulty of defining legal terms and foreseeing the eventualities which might arise in purely legal situations.
I am always rather suspicious of lawyers when they attempt to take over from their clients the management of what is going on and make their decisions


for them. I feel that the clients of the lawyers in this case are the personnel managers, the people who want to see better relations. They want to see Bills of this kind brought forward which will help to determine conditions of work and ensure that the rights of all parties are protected in a way which can be seen to be fair.
If we are able to produce Measures which determine conditions of work in such a way that all concerned can see their fairness and Tightness, we shall have done something extremely useful; but there is a danger with this Bill that we are going to leave something in which will be a cause of bad feeling in due course. I hope that we may still be able to work our way through, even at this late stage, to a way of removing this difficulty.

The Amendment would virtually restore the original phrases we objected to so strongly in Committee. I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) has made one useful addition, in the word "also". which I accept is a concession although not large enough to take out the unhappy imputation that an innocent man, a man who is not guilty of negligence, has in fact been negligent. It is a matter of choice at this stage exactly how the point is dealt with, but since the objective of the Bill is to improve relations it will attain that objective more completely if a formula can be found, even at this late stage, and I hope that it will.

I think that it is up to the hon. and learned Solicitor-General, with his ingenuity and grasp of the law, to round off our discussion by producing the final answer. He is not a man who is in any way pigheaded or unhelpful. On the contrary, I am sure that we see him as a man magnanimous and all-seeing. I hope that he will prove his command of the felicitous use of language even at this stage by finding a formula which we can accept unanimously as meeting all the objections which have been raised on this question of liability, both by the lawyers and by the personnel managers.

Mr. Donald Dewar: I have a great deal of sympathy with the line taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr.

Archer). I have listened with puzzlement throughout the Committee Stage and today to the gusto with which hon. Members have thrown themselves into this argument. I feel strongly that it is a storm in a teacup. We are arguing over a formula of words which is no more than a distinction without a difference.
I do not accept what the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) says about the possibility of damaging headlines, for I do not think that there will be such headlines, or if there are in a local paper they would be based on an award of damages, certainly not on the legal niceties of wording which appears in the Bill.
It does not matter what we put in the Bill; if A.B. and Company Limited is reported in the local Press as having been "done" for £5,000 as a result of an accident to an employee—it may have been deemed to have been negligent and it may not have been deemed to have been negligent and all sorts of circumlocutions may be invented in the House of Commons, but if it is thought to be a moral sin, it will be held by the public so to be because of what has happened in the court and not because of what is propounded in the Statute Book.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: If the word "negligence" were not in the Bill but an action were still possible, damages would be given on the basis that they arose out of an accident and the word "negligence" would not then be used. If—and this is our case—there is an award of damages which rests on the word "negligence ", it is a good deal worse. I ask the hon. Member to consider the situation with road accidents when——

Mr. Speaker: Order. We are on Report and interventions should not be second speeches.

Mr. Dewar: I appreciate what the hon. Member is saying, but I think that he is getting into further difficulties and into waters which he would not wish to enter. If we try to abolish the word "negligence" and say that damages should arise out of an accident, I immediately become enthusiastic, but the Bill does not try, and it would be hotly


contested if it did, to abolish the whole concept of negligence as a basis for damages. If it is said that when an employee is injured in the course of his accident, when there has been a genuine, bona fide, accident, he should be entitled to compensation on a generous scale through some insurance scheme, that may be a first class idea, but it is a different kind of argument. While our law stands firmly on the concept, however arbitrary and however artificial, of negligence, it is difficult to do without the word "negligence ". It has to be the basis of damages, at least in the context of the narrow reform proposed by the Bill.
Although I feel that it does not matter in terms of substance, I accept that the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Holland) has honestly and rightly said that in his view, which is obviously a view widely shared on his side of the House, there is a matter of moral substance, an important moral distinction, which has to be dealt with.
The hon. Member for Bath (Sir E. Brown) brought in the principle of a man continuing to be innocent until found guilty, and the hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) walked a somewhat similar path. This seems to be an utter misconception. There is a real and important distinction between the civil and the criminal law. The principle that a man is innocent until proven guilty is obviously relevant only to criminal matters, and even then it is a somewhat similar path. This seems of an essay in optimism, because the very fact that someone has been arrested is regarded by the public as a justifiable ground for thinking that he has done it. I am not sure, therefore, that it has a great deal of validity in terms of public opinion and moral judgments even in criminal law.
But it is certainly utterly irrelevant in civil law. Presumably, what the hon. Member for Bath was saying, and his view was shared by others, was that, if in some sort of way when an employer is deemed under the Bill to have been negligent, it can be said that he has been deemed to be guilty of the offence of negligence, there is some element of moral turpitude in the finding in a civil

court of damages as a result of an industrial accident. If that is the case, if the danger for the potential "victims"—and I use the word in inverted commas—is that the employer may be found "guilty" under the Bill, we are in an unfortunate situation when we consider the whole range of industrial injuries and the civil actions resulting therefrom.
There must be an enormous number of people who, at least in the view of the hon. Member for Bath, have very guilty consciences because there is an enormous number of occasions when the law finds a firm negligent on a law entirely divorced from any concept of moral blame. Obviously, the most common principle on which a successful action has been founded in the courts is vicarious liability. If it is assumed that in some sort of way there is a moral turpitude arising from the finding of damages for vicarious liability, and the poor employer in this common situation is in no way responsible and indeed—he may be the very opposite of responsible for the unwise actions, as they may be, of another workman who happens to be in his employment—are we to say, by the analogy of the kind of argument used this morning, that he is guilty in some sort of way of a moral sin as distinct merely from being found liable to compensate his employee in accordance with a very artificial concept, justified on social grounds on which the courts have worked?

12.15 p.m.

Mr. Holland: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that there is more justification for saying that the employer should be liable for the acts of his servants or employees than for the act of someone over whom he has no control whatever, and that it is the point of vicarious liability that the employer is responsible for someone over whom he exercises control, whereas the Bill is concerned with someone over whom he exercises no control as the supplier of the material?

Mr. Dewar: There is some justice in what the hon. Gentleman says. He puts forward the principle on which vicarious liability is founded. But this might get us into some interesting Third Reading arguments about the whole scope of the Bill which would now be out of order.


In making a point about moral guilt in terms of the general public, whether an employer should be found guilty or should be deemed to be guilty in some sense, my point holds. We have divorced the law from the concept of moral guilt and it is unfortunate to try to reintroduce it in this way. An obvious example is absolute liability under the Factory Acts. No one would pretend that in those circumstances there is a moral guilt, although there may be a perfectly successful ground for an action in which an employer is found negligent and, therefore, on the argument which has been used, guilty.
I do not think that this is a very difficult issue. If, in the context of this narrow Measure, we start to worry about innocence and guilt in the sense of moral turpitude and sin, we shall put an enormous number of employers in an impossible situation and by finding them "guilty" in civil actions which have nothing to do with the Bill we are discussing. Considering it in this way, it may be seen how unreasonable it is to worry about the reputation of an employer in this kind of situation. His reputation may suffer, but if it does it will suffer on the reported facts and not because of any kind of arbitrary definition of innocence, or guilt, or negligence, or the deeming of negligence.
The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford says that negligence bites home, but I hold firmly to the view that this is only when the facts allow it to bite, and the vast majority of damages are regarded by the public in terms of compensation for an accident, in terms of a technical concept of negligence, and not in terms of opprobrium or moral blame, as some hon. Members seem to think.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) has shown a sturdy resistance to arguments on the niceties of legal phraseology and at the end of the day he has had a notable victory. In the new Clause the use of the word "deemed" has crept back in and my hon. Friend is in a position to say, "I told you so ". He has shown a fair degree of flexibility by introducing the word "also", which, although it may not be strictly necessary, certainly in the mind of any one who may be interested stresses the crea-

tion of an alternative liability and not a substitute liability. By doing so, he has underlined that what we are doing is not imposing an absolute liability upon an employer, but offering an employee a choice between action against the employer and action against the third party. I should like to think that those who worry about the kind of issue which has been raised by hon. Members opposite will regard this as at least a considerable concession and a considerable consolation. The words in the Bill are clumsy and unnecessary, but with the new Clause added as well the point is underlined and emphasised. It is unlikely that the constituents of the hon. Member for Bath will ask him for detailed explanations of the Bill. If they do, I hope that he tells them to see a lawyer. Even a lawyer might be puzzled, I think, by the solution which the hon. Member for Carlton is asking us to endorse. To use a platitude with which none would disagree, a statute should be as clear and concise as possible, and these are advantages which my hon. Friend's proposals have. Intelligibility is a tremendous virtue. On these grounds alone and because I cannot see the moral justification for the distinction we have been invited to consider I hope that the proposals of the sponsors will be accepted.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Arthur Irvine): The point under consideration has been discussed at great length and has given a valuable example of the usefulness which often attaches to cooperation between hon. Members in an endeavour to get over what may appear to some a technical difficulty. In the absence of the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival), I must say that I felt particularly obliged to him for his work. He has kept in touch with me about this matter in the most courteous and constructive way. So this problem has been carefully considered.
I do not want to make debating points, but it is fair to recognise that in the new Clause the need for a reference to the concept of deemed negligence is admitted. That is very revealing. The proposal is that an expression which now appears to be thought undesirable to have too prominently in the Bill should be degraded to another and less noticeable part of the Measure. It is as though a


man who was going to have a gold filling was embarrassed at the prospect and proposed to his practitioner that it would be better if the filling were placed four or five stages back inside his mouth. This concession is significant.
The hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams), in the most courteous terms, invited me, at the last moment as he put it, to put forward a form of words which would satisfy everybody. I can offer the House nothing better than the language of my hon. Friend's Amendment. The concept of deemed negligence carries no imputation of moral guilt. The point has been made clearly and forcefully by my hon. Friends. The very term "deemed to be negligent" carries the sense, as matter of interpretation of our language, that it is not negligent. The point cannot usefully be embroidered.
I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis), who said that he thought that there might be a danger of increased litigation because of the desire of employers to be free of any possible stigma, even on the basis of misunderstanding of negligence. That is a point to which I have referred. I can only say, after careful thought, that the hon. Gentleman's fears in that respect are not well founded. There is no doubt in my mind that the Amendment which was carried in Committee against the advice which I ventured to give to the Committee created an inescapable need for some change at this stage, and, I would say, for my hon. Friend's Amendment.
There are many defects in the Clause as amended by the Committee. There is, in particular, the meaningless character which attaches to the expression
…without prejudice to the law relating to contributory negligence…".
in the context of a Clause which speaks of the fact that there was no negligence. That is the kind of defect—more than an infelicity—which can do much harm in a statutory provision.
There also remains the point, to which I attach great importance, that, if the Bill were left as amended and not changed, as I hope it will be, the effect would be to have a liability for damages at large, undefined, open to the gravest objection, not liability in contract, not

a statutory duty, not deemed to be any particular kind of tort, but simply a liability. That is a concept which is not welcome to hon. Members and certainly not to lawyers on either side.
I therefore hope that the new Clause will be rejected. I had it in mind to put before the House some of the instances in our statute law which makes it desirable that the reference to negligence should go into the Bill so that ancillary and related matters in a host of other statutes may take effect in the way that we all want them to. In all the circumstances, my sense of the matter is to think that it is not appropriate at this stage to do that. I have the feeling—I hope that I am right—that it is generally accepted that the true position is that no advantage is being taken of any theoretical line of thinking.
12.30 p.m.
I can give my assurance to the House that that is the statutory position and I would ask and hope that the new Clause will, therefore, be rejected.

Question put and negatived.

Clause 1

EXTENSION OF EMPLOYER'S LIABILITY FOR DEFECTIVE EQUIPMENT

Amendment made: No. 1, in page 1, line 12, leave out from beginning to end of line 15 and insert:
the injury shall be deemed to be also attributable to negligence on the part of the employer (whether or not he is liable in respect of the injury apart from this subsection),".—[Mr. Hugh D. Brown.]

Mr. Weitzman: I beg to move Amendment No. 2, in page 2, line 5, at end insert:
equipment" includes any equipment, plant, gear, machinery, tool, clothing, apparatus or appliance or any part thereof.

The Amendment was originally put down by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot), who, unfortunately, is unable to be present today to move it. I added my name to the Amendment because I regard it as well worthy of discussion.

The Amendment uses the term "equipment ", which, the House will recognise,


is a very wide term. The Oxford Dictionary defines "equipment" as
the action or process of equipping or fitting out; the state or condition of being equipped; the manner in which a person is equipped.

Obviously, that does not carry the matter very much further.

The definition of "equip" is stated to be
to furnish for service; to provide with what is required for efficient action as arms, instruments or apparatus of any kind".

The term "equipment" is, obviously, a very wide one. I have tried to see whether there is any legal definition of what the word means. The term is dealt with in a case in 1906, when Mr. Justice Kekewich said of equipment in connection with a hospital that it scarcely needed definition and that it covered anything and everything which was required to convert an empty building or part of an empty building into a hospital or part of a hospital, with all modern appliances.

In a later case in New Zealand, which is the only other one that I can find in which the word is commented upon, Mr. Justice Smith said:
That the word 'equipment' may have a wide meaning is plain, but the width of its meaning trust depend on the circumstances

He dealt with the word as used in connection with a lease and he decided from the clauses contained therein that it did not include tenants' fittings and fixtures.

The object of the Bill is to protect the workman against a defect in anything which is supplied to him in connection with his work, whether it be plant, gear, machinery, tools, clothing, apparatus or appliance or any part thereof. The Amendment seeks to avoid the possibility of the use of any ingenious argument, which lawyers are sometimes capable of putting forward, that something which is supplied to a workman, and in which there is a defect, cannot properly be called equipment. In my view, the word should be inserted to make absolutely certain that the workman is fully protected. Above all, I suggest that the words cannot possibly do any harm.

Moreover, I suggest that a strong point in favour of the insertion of these words by way of definition is that they have statutory authority. In Statutory Instrument No. 1580/1961, the Construction (General Provisions) Regulations, 1961, which

deal with the safety of employees in factories, Regulation 4(2) defines "plant or equipment" in this way:
plant or equipment includes any plant, equipment, gear, machinery, apparatus or appliance or any part thereof".

Again, in Statutory Instrument No. 1581/1961, the Construction (Lifting Operations) Regulations, 1961, which deal with the provision of lifting appliances in factories, Regulation 4(2) defines "plant or equipment" in exactly the same way.

More recently, in Statutory Instrument No. 94/1966, the Construction (Working Places) Regulations, 1966, which deal with the safety of working places and access and egress, Regulation 4(2) contains the very same definition. One therefore gets in Statutory Instruments the recognition by the legislature that there is a necessity to define the words "plant" and "equipment".

The Regulations to which I have referred deal specifically with the safety of workmen in certain ways and the possibility of accidents to them. Clearly, the legislature has in those cases taken care to define the word "equipment" so that there can be no doubt with regard to it. I suggest that it cannot be said that it is unnecessary to do so in the present case.

There is a strong case for the insertion of these words. I hope that the Amendment will be carefully considered. If it cannot be considered in the way in which it is put forward, I hope that consideration will be given to it when the Bill reaches another place.

Mr. Holland: The Amendment states that "' equipment' includes any equipment" plus all the other things. I should like to know from the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) whether the second "equipment" covers such things as corrosive fluids, gases or liquids. This is a valid point. Cleaning or plating materials are used as equipment by an employee and, due to a defect in their constitution or chemical reaction to them, an accident could occur. Does the second "equipment" cover such items?

Mr. Weitzman: I recognise the point that is made. The reason for including the second word "equipment" is because, in the Regulations to which I have referred, the legislature thought fit to


define "equipment" in the way in which I have ventured to repeat that word. It does not do any harm and I suppose that it covers any possibility of non-inclusion of anything which should be included.

Mr. R. W. Brown: A workman who uses a tool-cutting machine might use soluble oil to lubricate the cutting tool and the soluble oil might overflow on to his lathe. It could get on to the trousers of his overalls and cause cancer of the scrotum. Does my hon. and learned Friend feel that the wording of the Amendment would cover such a situation? The oil is part of the equipment which is used, but by the time the soluble oil has left the equipment it is in limbo. Does the Amendment protect people using that type of equipment, although it is not the equipment which causes the problem but the effect of using the equipment?

Mr. Weitzman: I think that these words are as wide as they possibly can be. I bow to the intelligence of the legislature on former occasions on putting forward that definition.

The Solicitor-General: I hope that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) will not press the Amendment. There are two main reasons why it would not be desirable to make the change he proposes.
First, if one starts, when dealing with a word like "equipment", to give instances of it, however compendious the list may appear to be, one is bound to cast doubt on the generality. This is an important objection and an argument by way of analogy to the Statutory Instruments to which my hon. and learned Friend referred does not prevail over this point. There is a territory, so to speak, between premises on one side and materials on the other and, broadly, the territory between is well described and delimited by the term "equipment."
The matter to which my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Fins-bury (Mr. R. W. Brown) referred would depend on narrow matters of fact. The hypothesis which he put forward was more in the category of material than of equipment, but I take the point that one may have a situation in which there

is a corrosive effect on material, machinery, equipment or plant and that the result may be dependent on whether the harmful agent would come within the term "equipment". For this reason it would be better not to attempt a more particularised definition of "equipment".
Secondly, there is authority for the proposition that when one is dealing with words of general application in a Statute one must, for the construction of the Statute, narrow the term that one is seeking to construe to the fitness of the Statute. That principle is applied in considering the meaning of a word of wide application in an Act.
When one considers that proposition in the context of this Measure and applies that principle to it, the result is that an undesirably narrow or restrictive interpretation of "equipment" would not be resorted to by the courts. For these reasons I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will not press the Amendment.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: I find it difficult to disagree with the argument advanced by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General. Despite the reasonableness of the case made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman), I hope that he will withdraw the Amendment; and perhaps we can discuss the matter to see if there is a possibility of approaching the subject in another way.

12.45 p.m.

Mr. Weitzman: I thought it right to table the Amendment because of what I said originally, and I hope that the matter will be further considered.
The Solicitor-General suggested that the Amendment would be restrictive, but I am not sure about that. The fact that the word "equipment" may be inserted a second time surely means that it cannot possibly be restrictive. I recognise the wide way in which "equipment" could be construed and that when certain words are included in legislation there is a danger that the courts may have to define them in a particular way and that difficulty might arise.
Nevertheless, the legislator, knowing of these difficulties in matters very much akin to this—matters concerning the safety of work in regard to the use of appliances


in factories—thought fit to insert a definition of "equipment". The same argument might have been used on that occasion against the insertion of that word.
I realise, however, that there is weight in the argument adduced by my hon. and learned Friend and while I hope that the matter will receive further consideration, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 2

SHORT TITLE, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: I beg to move Amendment No. 3, in page 2, line 20, at end insert:
(3) Nothing in the Government of Ireland Act 1920 shall prevent the Parliament of Northern Ireland from making laws for purposes similar to the purposes of section 1 of this Act.

Mr. Speaker: I suggest that it would be convenient to discuss, at the same time, the following Amendment, which is linked: No. 4, in line 21, after 'Act', insert 'except the foregoing subsection'.

Mr. Brown: That is convenient, Mr. Speaker, and I wish to make it clear at the outset that this series of Amendments has nothing to do with one-man one-vote or with sit-down strikes in Stormont. It is a formal matter and is in no way controversial.
The Amendment is designed to remove any possible doubt about the power of the Northern Ireland Parliament to legislate in a similar way to this Measure. The new subsection (3) is a common form provision often found in the Statute Book. Clause 1(4) of the Bill binds the Crown and Clause 2 extends to England, Wales and Scotland, but not to Northern Ireland. It is possible that the Parliament of Northern Ireland will wish to pass similar legislation and it is important that it should be clear that it has the power to do so.
There is no doubt that the Northern Ireland Parliament has power to pass a Bill similar to this one. There is, however, some doubt about whether it could make such a Bill binding on the Crown in terms of Northern Ireland. It would

clearly be wrong to allow doubt on this point to continue, and the Amendment makes the position clear.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: No. 4, in line 21, after 'Act', insert 'except the foregoing subsection'.—[Mr. Hugh D. Brown.]

Order for Third Reading read.—[Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified]

12.50 p.m.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
My sponsoring of this Bill was strongly criticised by a Scottish newspaper. Since it is usually the Daily Express which makes criticisms, I should make it clear that on this occasion it was not the Daily Express. I was accused of having sponsored a mouse of a Bill. There is something in this, but it must be remembered that a private Member is confronted with the choice of producing something useful, practical, modest and worthwhile with some possibility of success, and producing something that may be regarded as a propaganda exercise. Being mindful of this criticism, I preferred to produce a mouse rather than to do a bit of roaring and accomplish nothing useful.
I have been encouraged by the support of the Government. My right hon. and learned Friends have been extremely helpful with the technicalities, and, with natural Scottish modesty, I claim that the Bill arose from a case in Scotland to which reference has been made.
This Bill is a small but useful piece of social reform, which is designed to assist and protect the ordinary worker in the factory. The Bill may in a small way reflect favourably on the Government. This is not a party point. I am certain that the electors of Walthamstow, East will not be agitated about our deliberations this morning; they are probably thinking about other things; but in the eyes of the voters and the trade unionists we have done something useful.
Honourable Members opposite have been extremely helpful, courteous and co-operative. While we all might have dreams of leading the troops into rousing battles, we have on this occasion worked together very well and with understanding. I am, therefore, delighted


to ask the House to give the Bill a Third Reading.

12.53 p.m.

Mr. Holland: On Second Reading 1 had high hopes that, with good will on both sides, we might be able to produce a Bill which was well rounded. By that I mean a Bill which would seem to be reasonable, moderate and fair to everyone affected by it. I am naturally delighted that Section 2(2) now reads:
This Act shall come into force on the expiration of the period of three months beginning with the date on which it is passed.
Those words are included as a result of the persuasive pleading of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis), who has the distinction of being the only hon. Member, other than the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown), to have had an Amendment accepted between Second and Third Reading.
The main purpose of the Bill has been variously defined during debate, but I think we all agree that in general terms the purpose is to make it easier for an employee to obtain damages for an injury caused as the result of a latent defect in equipment by making the employer liable for such damages, in addition to anyone else who may be liable in tort. I do not think that there has been any dispute about this general purpose throughout the passage of the Bill. So far as the Bill achieves this purpose, I support it.
I confess to a sense of disappointment at what at times I felt to be a stonewalling innings played by the hon. Member for Provan at one end of the pitch and the Solicitor-General at the other. Nevertheless, I congratulate the hon. Member for piloting through a Measure which I hope will be effective in alleviating hardship in an area in which hardship may well exist. On these grounds I support the Bill on Third Reading.

12.55 p.m.

The Solicitor-General: I greatly welcome the progress which the Bill is making. I congratulate my hon. Friend for the work which he has done upon it. It is a useful Bill and I think my hon. Friend has made good use of his legislative opportunities.

12.56 p.m.

Mr. James Hamilton: It gives me great pleasure to welcome the Third Reading of the Bill, and I am also pleased to have been a member of the Committee which considered it. It gives me even greater pleasure to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown), whose constituency is next door to mine, and I am glad that he has selected this subject for his Bill. The Bill gives untold joy to the trade union movement as a whole and particularly to my union, the Constructional Engineering Union.
In Committee, it was noticeable that, although we all had our differences of opinion in party politics, the Committee worked with great cordiality. We were determined to produce the best possible Bill which would be beneficial to employees and to employers. I have been told by many employers in my constituency that they are happy that such a Bill should pass through the House. The Bill will make the position clearer to all, particularly to trade union officials who are involved with accidents at factories. I hope that the Bill will have a safe passage in the other place and that, when it reaches the Statute Book, it will make the job of the trade union official much easier.
I have been impressed by the work which has been performed during the passage of the Bill. Those of us who do a great deal of Committee work cannot say that we always enjoy it, but I enjoyed every minute of the work in Committee on this Bill.
Although one Glasgow newspaper has said that this is a mouse of a Bill, to members of the trade union movement, to my constituents and to the people of Scotland it is not a mouse of a Bill but rather a lion of a Bill, and one which is essential. I therefore have much pleasure in supporting the Third Reading.

12.58 p.m.

Mr. Norman Miscampbell: I apologise for not having been here throughout the whole sitting this morning, but I had a very urgent engagement.
Like the hon. Member for Bothwell (Mr. James Hamilton), I, too, enjoyed the Committee stage very much. It was


a constructive, helpful and worthwhile Committee.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) on bringing forward the Bill, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) on being the only hon. Member to get an Amendment accepted. I put my name to that Amendment, and it was the only Amendment which my hon. Friend was advised would be of no use, there was no point in moving it, and he must go ahead on his own. However, that just shows how wrong one can be.
I have always had a fundamental objection to dealing with a problem by deeming someone to be negligent. It may be that it is not possible to avoid it. I accept that it probably is not possible in this case. But it is right that, in passing the Bill, this House should recognise that it is not a satisfactory way of solving any problem, and I hope very much that it will not be regarded as a precedent if it can be helped.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan said that he had been accused of producing a mouse of a Bill. It is a little bigger now. It might be considered a little rude, but I would think it more appropriate to refer to it as a rat of a Bill. Certainly its terms are wider than some of us thought they would be. We thought that we were putting to rights the well-known problem which arose in Davie v. New Merton Board Mills. We realised after the Christmas Recess that we were riding a much fiercer horse than the one on which we started out. It is clear that, in changing a social position, we have gone much further than the narrow legal view that we took originally. I was very conscious of this, because I had firm assurances before Christmas there there might be some changes made in the Bill. However, it became clear after Christmas that the atmosphere in the Committee had changed and that those alterations were not forthcoming.
We must recognise that we are placing another burden upon employers. It may be that it is rightly placed upon shoulders which can bear it. It is a burden which they have accepted and about which they have not complained. No doubt they will have to cope with it by means of

extra insurance. We should recognise that one side of industry is bearing a burden in order that an innocent worker shall not end up without the compensation which is his due.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Provan. I think that this will be a helpful Bill.

1.3 p.m.

Mr. Dewar: I want to add my own congratulations to the very many which must have almost buried my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown). My own feeling has always been that any attack upon his choice, having been fortunate enough to win the ballot, has been misplaced and quite unfair. It is always tempting to go for the spectacular Bill which will hit the headlines in the Press and draw the attention of an hon. Member's constituents to his activities. In my view, in many ways that is a futile activity, and my hon. Friend is to be congratulated on having gone for a Measure which had every chance of success, and that fact has been borne out by the co-operation which has come from all sides of the House.
The Bill will improve our law, and it will improve the lot of certain employees who, in the past, have found themselves handicapped when seeking damages or compensation to which they were entitled.
I want also to congratulate the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Holland), who has done a great deal of work on the Opposition Front Bench in a splendidly non-partisan fashion. I hope that no one will think it amiss if I pay tribute to his work.
A point of some substance which, rather surprisingly, was mentioned only by the hon. Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) arose when he departed in to the animal world. The Bill has concentrated entirely on the very real disagreement about the suitability of certain words—"deemed" and "not deemed". It was suggested that this was the only difference between the two sides and, at the end of the day, that turned out to be the case.
I must confess that, throughout the Committee proceedings, I was under the impression that there was likely to be another and much more serious battle about the scope of the Bill. Opinions


apparently changed over Christmas. There had been an undertaking from my hon. Friend that he would look again at the definition of "third party" and the possibility of excluding certain categories. He said that he might perhaps be able to help the Committee. In the end, he felt unable to do that, for reasons which I quite understand——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sydney Irving): Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot discuss any other matter than that which is in the Bill. If he is suggesting that a change could not be made, presumably that is a matter which is not in the Bill and is, therefore, out of order.

Mr. Dewar: I appreciate that nicety, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I have no intention of discussing hypothetical changes which might have been made. However, I think that I am in order in commenting on what is in the Bill and the varying interpretations which have been placed upon it at its different stages.
There is no doubt that there was a certain amount of difference between the two sides as to what the Bill was attempting to do. In column 129 of the Committee stage, the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) put forward his own views on this question and supported them with a battery of quotations from my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, my hon. Friend the Member for Provan, my own contributions on Second Reading, and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Archer). He said that, in his view, the interpretation then put on the Bill by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General and my hon. Friend the Member for Provan represented "a big shift" from his own interpretation, which he thought was generally accepted on Second Reading. I would not categorise it as a shift from a mouse to a rat, but I think that it is a substantial point worthy of comment, particularly as the fight which appeared to be developing did not come to pass.
There was disagreement about what this Bill really encompassed. Some tended to over-estimate it. There was talk about a new absolute liability. But one of the features of the Bill is that negligence has been laid down as the basis for action in

the civil courts. There was the danger of under-estimating the importance of what was in the Bill when it was originally brought forward. I do not think that it was right to argue that it was a narrow attempt to reverse the decision in Davie v. New Merton Board Mills. It was not just a straight carry-over, although that was something which appealed to me originally. It was an extension of the principle of vicarious liability——

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: I know that my hon. Friend feels strongly about this, but I must point out to him that he does me a grave injustice. He referred earlier to the fact that the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) had quoted large chunks of everyone's contributions, including my own. I hasten to point out to him that the hon. and learned Gentleman could not have done that, because he had nothing against me. I hope that my hon. Friend will make it clear that it was members of the legal fraternity who were being quoted by the hon. and learned Gentleman.

Mr. Dewar: I am anxious to do anything which will keep my hon. Friend happy. There was a plethora of quotations advanced, but I am prepared to make an exception in my hon. Friend's case.
I will not detain the House for long in pushing this matter too far. I think that everyone accepts that the intention of the Bill was to extend the principle of vicarious liability. I think that the point has been put in perspective by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General. He said in Committee:
The Bill is designed to abolish this rule by substituting in its place the contrary and wider rule, based on general public and social policy, that an employer is liable to his employee for injuries resulting from any defect in equipment caused by the fault of a third party—any third party, anywhere."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C. Wednesday, 22nd January 1969; c. 74.]
Suggestions have been made about the difficulties which might arise in a situation where, under the Bill, there would be an action against the employer but not against the supplier of the equipment which was the cause of the accident, possibly because the defect was the result of activities outside the course of employment, possibly because it was a matter of industrial sabotage, or the criminal


act of a third party. That situation, for social reasons, should be covered. It is very real and, on social grounds, I am prepared to support it.
There is no point in rehearsing at length the arguments in the matter as the point has not been argued at length from the Opposition. But in the context of the disquiet which emerged on Second Reading, and which is increasing in many quarters, about the present state of the law on damages, I feel that this is an interesting Bill which has taken us further along the road to loosening the present tight concept of negligence as enforced in the courts.
Vicarious liability, as it was put to me forcibly and properly by the hon. Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) a little while ago in the form of an intervention, can be defended on the ground that, although there may be no moral control in the generally understood sense of the word, of an employee by an employer, the employer is still responsible for selecting and generally supervising his employees. If an action arises through the negligence of an employee and another employee is victimised there is an umbrella of liability which it is easy to see. Similarly, if we take the old narrow understanding of the Bill, which was mooted, it seems to me that we are still under the same umbrella operating in the same sphere. We could argue that the supplier of the equipment was picked by the employer and therefore it was right that the employer should be responsible for any accident resulting from the negligence of that supplier. This was the same argument and it left us in the same position as we were in with the general rule on vicarious liability which we all accept.
We have now moved a fair degree from that, because the Bill is saying that the employer will be responsible for the actions of third parties in a situation where the supplier would not be responsible. This is a different situation from the general mere extension of vicarious liability.
I welcome this and am prepared to see further pushes made in this direction. If the breach had been opened a little further, and we are encouraged in future to discuss or consider—and I hope it will be considered—whether we should not be looking at the whole artificiality

of the situation where a man can be injured in his employment and, because of the technicalities of the law, can get no compensation, whereas his workmate, because he falls between these artificial definitions, can obtain substantial damages, it will be a good thing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) is to be congratulated for the useful reform brought about by the Bill. He is also to be congratulated because it will act, to some minor extent possibly but in a definite way, as a pointer to much wider and larger reforms which we must ultimately see in this sphere.

1.14 p.m.

Mr. Weitzman: I should like to add a few words to what has been said, but I will not detain the House long.
I had the privilege of taking part in the various stages of the Bill, and I should like to add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) on achieving Third Reading of the Bill and having it passed through all its different stages. I think that the Bill makes a very useful contribution in this sphere.
There is only one point I desire to make. The hon. Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) talked about the provisions of the Bill as constituting some burden upon the employer. True enough, it is a burden, but it is one which the employer can quite properly cover by insurance.
The possibility of injury and suffering to a workman in matters of this kind is a real problem which can spell out very serious disaster in the way of injury to himself and suffering to his family.
My hon. Friend certainly deserves every congratulation for having brought forward a measure which will succeed in ameliorating any loss which may lie in that direction.

1.15 p.m.

Mr. Laurence Pavitt: I rise briefly to add my voice to the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown). I did not serve on the Committee, but I looked with interest at the Bill when it was first brought before the House because I am interested in the health aspects.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for succeeding in piloting the Bill through the House. Although it is mainly concerned with the legal responsibilities for defective equipment, there is also a side product, because, provided there is an improvement in this sphere, there will be an improvement in the numbers of people who do not suffer from accidents rather than those who do. As this is a great charge upon the National Health Service and elsewhere, I think that the whole House will be grateful to my hon. Friend for the excellent way in which he has got the Bill before the House and for the way that the House has deal with it.

1.16 p.m.

Sir E. Brown: It would be wrong of me, having opposed in principle parts of the Clauses of the Bill, to withhold my congratulation from the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown).
The Bill in its present form now goes on, and one hopes that it will become the law. But I reserve to myself the doubts that I have about the legal arguments which will, in the first instance, take place arising from the operation of the Bill. Had all Members of the Committee been present today, there is not the slightest doubt that 100 per cent. congratulation would be due to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

CONTROL OF VENEREAL DISEASES BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

1.17 p.m.

Sir Myer Galpern: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
As hon. Members know, a back bencher faced with the formidable task of introducing and, if lucky, piloting a Private Member's Bill through its various stages has to rely entirely on his own resources and endeavour. Not for him the essential help of the legal draftsman, the expert research and guidance of the civil servant, and all the other aids available to the Government in promoting legislation. The consequence, all too often, is the presentation of a Bill which, had Government aid been made available, would in all probability have seen the light of day in a form more acceptable to the House.
I freely confess that this would have been the case with my Bill, which seeks to re-enact the Second World War temporary powers conferred by Defence Regulation 33B to compel the medical examination and treatment of persons suspected of suffering from venereal disease.
However, one may view the Bill, all of us must admit to grave concern over the fact that V.D. has now reached epidemic proportions in this country. The time has come when we must shock people out of their complacency, ignorance and apathy. In my opinion, this is a task not to be shirked by politicians. It is our duty to reveal the facts and proclaim human decency throughout society.
I believe that we have acquiesced for too long in permissiveness in moral issues and stood by while moral values are allowed to rot. A generation is emerging which no longer cherishes chastity. The present teenage culture despises the value of adult experience and authority.
The tragedy is that promiscuity among young people is closely connected with the step rise in venereal disease—notably gonorrhoea. The advent of the Pill and legal abortion will undoubtedly lead to still further promiscuity.
In Great Britain at the present time about 30 diseases are notifiable, for the obvious purpose of safeguarding the


health of the community. Yet venereal disease, which today constitutes Britain's second largest group of reported infectious diseases after measles, is not notifiable.
The facts are really startling. Every day in Great Britain 200 people contract a venereal disease. Last year the incidence of gonorrhoea rose by 15 per cent., and this year it is estimated that no fewer than 200,000 people will visit the 230 V.D. clinics in the country, in other words, one out of every 300 people in the country.
I invite the House to allow me to look in a little more detail at the statistics relating to the steep rise in the incidence of the disease. I quote from Appendix C, "Tables relating to cases seen at Venereal Disease Clinics: England and Wales" in the 1967 Report of the Medical Officer of Health. In 1950 the total number of males seen at V.D. clinics in England and Wales was 78,487. In 1967 the number had risen to 119,545. In 1950 the number of females seen at the clinics was 32,342. In 1967 that number had leapt to 56,829.
But those figures do not give the whole story. Britain's V.D. clinics report their statistics to the Ministry of Social Security, the erstwhile Ministry of Health, but these clinics serve only about three-quarters of the population. Specialists, general practitioners, and Service medical officers do not have to notify V.D. figures, and the Venereologists Group of the British Medical Association estimates that 25 per cent. could be added to the reported cases of syphilis and 15 per cent. to the figures for gonorrhoea for cases treated outside the clinic service.
The epidemic is, of course, not confined to Great Britain. The World Health Organisation experts on gonoccocal infection estimated in 1962 that about 60 million to 65 million cases of gonoccocal infection occurred annually throughout the world. The figures clearly establish the magnitude of the social problem confronting us today. Only 10 years ago doctors claimed that V.D. had reached a record low level. Since then, unfortunately, the yearly total of new cases has trebled.
The changing sexual behaviour pattern of young people, teenage promiscuity especially among females, is directly responsible for a considerable proportion of

the increase. Dr. Willcox of St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, says:
The very promiscuous are almost certain to contract veneral disease sooner or later.
Intensified population movements by air, land and sea are also contributory factors to the rise.
I am most concerned, as I am sure all hon. Members are, about the steep rise in the incidence of venereal disease among the 15 to 24 age group. In 1963, 14,032 in this age group were attending clinics in England and Wales. In 1967 the figure for that age group had risen to 17,890, an increase of almost 33⅓ per cent. This prevalence of V.D. among young adults contract syphilis or turbing.
Unfortunately, there is appalling ignorance about V.D., particularly among teenagers, largely due to a considerable unwillingness and resistance to include V.D. in health education, the subject being regarded as dirty. In a survey recently undertaken, 1,800 teenagers were invited to write down something about their sexual knowledge. More than half knew nothing about the symptoms of V.D., and of those who confessed to sexual intercourse, three out of four boys and four out of five girls would never have known that they had become infected; yet National Health figures show that every day 50 teenagers and young adults contract syphilis or gonorrhea.
I dare say some hon. Members saw the Panorama programme screened by the B.B.C. a few weeks ago when it dealt with this very topic of V.D. It was an extremely interesting programme. Two medical men on the programme did not agree. One favoured the present situation; the other was all for legal action to try to control the disease.
I was most interested in the replies given by several of the teenage girls who were interviewed. On said:
I cannot feel guilty or ashamed about having gonorrhea because I have done something completely natural like just to sleep with somebody. I just cannot feel ashamed.
Another girl, asked whether she was ashamed when told that she had gonorrhea for the first time, replied:
No, I do not think so.


Yet another teenager of 16 said:
I would not be horrified because it is quite a common thing nowadays.
Teenagers and adults do not know that V.D. can be disastrous. In the light of those figures and in the light of the present situation, what are we to do? What guidance are we to give? What action are we to take in an attempt to control this scourge?
In the 1966 Annual Report the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health, as it was, said:
These infections are human problems with potentially disastrous effects on health and happiness. If they are to be contained they require high standards of skill, devotion and energy from clinicians, epidemiologists and auxiliary workers. They require also from the public more knowledge and more under-Standing of human frailty unclouded by prejudice.
What does that declaration mean in practical terms? Despite the rising figures, only one new clinic attached to the Middlesex Hospital has been built in the last 25 years. There is no money available for the propaganda that is so urgently necessary. One venereologist declared:
We come right down at the bottom of the list for money because the people who allocate it are still the ones who believe that those who get V.D. deserve to suffer a bit.
I do not know how far this is fair criticism. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security said, in a Written Answer on 18th November, 1968:
The Government take the problem of venereal disease very seriously, and steps are currently being taken to improve the tracing of contacts, which I consider is the most effective way of controlling these diseases. There is also need to increase public awareness about these infections, and I am sure the newly formed Health Education Council will play an important part in this."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th November 1968; Vol. 773, c. 209.]
Let us consider contact tracing, the method favoured by the Secretary of State. In November, 1968, the then Minister of Health sent to local authorities a memorandum headed "Contact Tracing in the Control of Venereal Disease." I should like, if it would not bore the House, to have the opportunity of reading practically the whole of this document because it is a very fundamental document to this debate, but I shall restrict my quotations to certain aspects of it.
I begin with paragraph 6, "Aim of contact tracing", because it is essential that

the House should know precisely what is involved in contact tracing and should see whether this is a method which can be relied upon reasonably to control the spread of V.D. That paragraph says:
The aim of contact tracing is to ensure that the sexual contacts of persons found to be suffering from venereal disease are identified and persuaded to attend a clinic for examination and for treatment when this is necessary. This is not only in the interests of the individual; it is the most important single preventive measure that can be taken in attempting to control these diseases. Contacts may include not only the presumptive source of infection of a particular patient, but others with whom he or she may have associated in a promiscuous group. They may also include a spouse who is unaware that infection has occurred.
Paragraph 7 is headed, "Necessary conditions and Action". It says:
Contact tracing calls for a cycle of action as follows. The patient provides information to an 'interviewer', who either acts on this information or conveys it to a 'contact tracer'; subsequent action by either is to seek out the contact and persuade him or her to obtain medical advice. If this person is infected a further cycle will then begin; the first cycle should be completed by reporting the outcome to the clinic which got the information first.
Paragraph 8 says:
If efficiency is to be ensured, the following conditions must be satisfied. The utmost speed"—
those words are in bold capitals—
in obtaining, communicating and acting upon information must be achieved…".
I doubt whether what I have read so far is indicative of how it will be possible to act with speed in tracing somebody, whether by the colour of his hair, or his complexion, or his size, or anything else about that person, for the paragraph goes on to say:
…but at the same time, confidentiality between the patient and doctor must be honoured.
I come to the final paragraph, paragraph 10, which is important:
Interviewing the patient.
At present the patients usually give information regarding their sexual contacts either to the clinician or to another 'interviewer', who may be a member of the nursing staff, a medical social worker or other officer employed by the hospital, or an employee of the local health authority working at the clinic. On the first occasion patients are often given one or more contact slips and asked to persuade their sexual contacts to attend an appropriate clinic with the slips. This method, which meets with a reasonable


measure of success where the contacts are regular consorts but with very little success where contacts are casual, will continue to be useful; and it must be left to the judgment of the 'interviewer' whether it is to be employed in individual cases. Consideration should be given, however, to the use in every possible case of a more active tracing method, in which identifying details concerning the contacts are diligently sought, as well as or in preference to the contact slip.
I have read from that report in some detail to try to give hon. Members the opportunity of judging the type of work involved in this method to which the Secretary of State pins his faith.
I have tried to put the success of contact tracing to the test by reference to statistics, and I shall simply quote what I thought would be the most acceptable figures from the annual report of the Glasgow Medical Officer of Health, published in 1967 Table VII in that report shows the outcome of efforts to trace female contacts. The total number notified at local clinics and elsewhere was 1,145 in 1967. The number not traced was 722. In other words, roughly 60 per cent. of the people suspected as possible contacts have not been traced by the social workers involved. I believe that this is probably indictave of the pattern throughout the country.
A good deal of pioneering work in this field has been done in Sheffield, but I have not been able to obtain any figures which would allow me to reach a conclusion on the extent of the success of this system of contact tracing in Sheffield.
I am sure we are all serious in our desire to control venereal disease, and I believe the issue before the House is whether we should have contact tracing or compulsory notification and treatment, as I have suggested in the Bill. Before we proceed to arrive at a conclusion, let us consider how other countries deal with the problem. Forty-four countries have varying forms of venereal disease legislation which, in the majority of cases, is based on the Swedish law of 1918, as amended in 1948. This law makes treatment compulsory for all patients and requires medical practitioners to trace the source of infection. Infecting, or exposing another to infection, is made an offence. In Great Britain, medical practitioners are not required to notify cases and there is not compulsory examination and treatment.
Let us look for a moment at legislation in some other countries. As I said, I do not regard the Bill as perfect and, if it were given a Second Reading, I should have no objection if it were then mutilated in Committee and we were able to draw upon other sources of knowledge in order to produce a worth-while and workable Measure.
In Italy, all cases of venereal disease with active contagious manifestations must be notified to the provincial medical officer. In Canada, when any physician or other person attending any patient knows or has good reason to believe that such a patient is infected with venereal disease, such physician or other person shall take action with regard to notifying these diseases as is provided for by the special regulations regarding venereal disease issued by the Minister of Public Health, and it shall be the duty of every physician immediately upon discovering a case of communicable disease to secure the isolation of the patient or to take such action as is required by the special rules and regulations laid down.
In East Germany, the onus is laid upon the person. Any person who knows or suspects that he is suffering from a venereal disease must immediately have himself examined by a physician and, in case of disease, submit to treatment as well as to the necessary subsequent examinations or treatment. Examination and treatment, in the contagious stage, shall be regarded as complete when a written medical certificate to that effect is issued. East Germany goes still further: if the patient or suspect is a minor, or if he is incapable of appreciating the necessity and significance of the medical measures and the danger of contagion, a guardian or other person responsible for his well-being must be informed.
In New Zealand, the position is much the same. Persons suffering from venereal disease are by law required to undergo treatment.
In France, any person with respect to whom there exists definite, serious and concordant circumstantial evidence to the effect that he has communicated venereal disease to one or more persons may be required by duly substantiated decision of the health authorities to present within a time limit set by those health authorities a medical certificate stating that he


is, or is not, suffering from infectious venereal disease.
If my argument so far in favour of compulsory notification has not met with much success, perhaps the thought that to adopt it might enable us to enter the Common Market with less difficulty and greater expedition may influence hon. Members to agree that our law should be changed and be brought more into accord with that now effective in France.
I am not suggesting that these other countries have been 100 per cent. successful in treating cases as a result of their legislation on venereal disease. Obviously not. But I submit that their approach is preferable to, and more successful than, ours. The system of contact tracing is laborious and difficult, for the social worker has very little information to go on. If hon. Members will read the whole of the memorandum from which I quoted extracts, they will see precisely and in detail how frustrating the business of contact tracing can be for the people engaged in it.
I do not regard the purpose of the Bill as an infringement of civil liberties, as some organisations have seen fit to say in letters to me. Are our requirements for the notification of infectious diseases, almost 30 of them, an interference with civil liberty? Would there not be a public outcry if those requirements for compulsory notification and isolation were repealed? I cannot, therefore, accept that argument. In some public places people are prohibited from smoking. They do not regard it as an interference with their civil liberties. There are many restrictions of that kind, but they are not in a true sense interferences with or restrictions upon the rights of individuals.
In reply to Questions recently, the Secretary of State for Social Services said that the expenditure on venereal disease cannot be ascertained. Undoubtedly, a large sum of money is required here. We do not know how much is being spent, but we do know that a substantial sum is needed on three important aspects of the problem—health education, the establishment of more clinics, and research.
There is a tremendous amount of work to be done in health education. There are few indications in places to which people go of what to do if one contracts

a venereal disease, except in some old Underground toilet rooms. We never see on the Underground or the escalators along with the other advertisements notices telling people about treatment or about what to do. A lot of propaganda ought to be done in health education. There is a lot of resistance to be overcome, and overcome it will have to be. There is a lot to be done in the establishment of more clinics and in research. One venereologist told me that if he could have £50,000 he could do an enormous amount of work on V.D. infection.
The fields I have mentioned—health education, the establishment of more clinics, and research—are basic to any campaign for the control of venereal disease, but they are ancillary to and not substitutes for compulsory notification and treatment. In my opinion, Defence Regulation 33B was a successful measure in the fight against V.D. I regret that it was repealed. I am convinced that contact tracing will not meet the present urgent need for the control of venereal disease in view of the alarming increase in its incidence. I urge the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

1.48 p.m.

Mr. Charles Pannell: My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern) has had a distinguished record in local government in Scotland. Few hon. Members could claim to have held a position like that of Lord Provost of one of our two great cities. One remembers with respect an hon. Gentleman opposite, a great friend of mine, Sir Will Darling, who will have been known also to my hon. Friend.
In taking on this Bill, my hon. Friend has taken on a task which should rest squarely on the Government, not on the private Member. All my experience is that Bills of this sort and this length stand little chance of passing through the House at this time of year. If we are forced to a vote on the Bill, I shall not vote against it, but I do not think that I shall vote for it.
I spoke of local government a moment ago. The Association of Municipal Corporations, of which I am a vice-president, takes a very dim view of the Bill. It thinks that it is one of those Bills which, under the guise of being helpful, is positively dangerous.
I welcome any steps towards limiting the spread of venereal disease, but the Association's Health Committee is opposed to the principles of the Bill because it considers that compulsory medical treatment is unsound in concept, and that the provisions are not likely to be an effective measure of controlling the spread of the disease. A compulsory system is a right-about-turn from the practice of the past 50 years in dealing with this social danger. There was a Royal Commission on the matter. The Bill might well discourage people from attending for treatment. Social workers have, in general, been very successful in persuading contacts to attend for medical examination, and it would be harmful to this voluntary relationship if it became known that information given to a social worker or doctor could lead in due course to the legal action.
One is always rather diffident about opposing Measures such as this, but it must be said that venereal disease is one of those hit-or-miss diseases. It largely springs from promiscuity. It might be perfectly possible for a person not suffering from it to sleep with someone for a night and to be reported upon. There might be a leak in the legal machinery and the information might reach his or her place of work, and the matter might end with litigation. I do not like the idea of being prepared to accept a statement from an injured person, someone who suddenly finds himself or herself with the disease and says, "I think that it was So-and-So." He or she might be promiscuous. That idea is a bit grim.
My hon. Friend spoke about the example of 44 other countries. But, it is not enough to do that. One must look at their social backgrounds. My hon. Friend mentioned East Germany. I have been there, and I know that the docketing of people for all sorts of things is rampant. That has not been the practice here.
When I am in doubt about a matter, I always like to look at the history of previous attempts at legislation on it. I am glad to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) here, because, like me, he has always been interested in movements for women's rights. One of the greatest Parliamentary battles of all time was fought over the Contagious Diseases

Acts and associated with it was the greatest of all women in this field, Josephine Butler. Because soldiers caught diseases in garrison towns, in the 1840s there was legislation that any women in a garrison town or seaport who refused to submit to medical examination for venereal disease should be labelled as a common prostitute. A famous by-election was fought in Colchester on the issue. It was the first time that women had really entered into the electoral battle. The owners of the brothels in Colchester were so upset about this that they burned the building in which she spoke, and she had to flee from the crowds. In those days, Ministers had to fight an election when they were appointed, and Sir Henry Storks was killed politically in that by-election.
That resulted in the great Royal Commission on the Contagious Diseases Acts. One can read its proceedings in the Library, and it is still interesting to read those old pages. Josephine Butler was the first woman ever to appear before a Royal Commission. The Commission obviously thought it had a timid woman before it, but by the time she had answered her eleven hundredth question she was dominating the proceedings, and a contemporary document said:
It seemed that the spirit of the Lord had entered there.
The women's movements have fought all along against compulsory registration, and they will not accept this Bill. We still have a dual code in our society, that women must be punished and conditioned to the needs of men. This is very much resented by women. I opposed the Street Offences Act and all similar legislation because of that dual code, and I shall also oppose the one before us. I do not mind legislation that fixes upon people known to have a contagious disease, but I am opposed to the kind of snooping that can lead to blackmail, the vilest of practices, and which may involve an innocent person.
We must draw a sharp line between crimes that outrage the law and matters of morality. There used to be a strongly held doctrine that young people should not be fitted up with contraceptives because they might become immoral. I am rather old-fashioned, but we see that practically every university now gives advice on contraception to protect the


innocent, the ignorant and the inexperienced, and it may be extended to grammar schools.
The House cannot accept the system laid down in Clause 1. I would not be guided by what other countries do. I am a child of this House and this country, and I know how the political system has grown up. I know the great battle fought by the women's organisations, and it is the women who will be the principal victims of the Bill. It will not be the men. I know the great Parliamentary battles that have been waged over the years to protect women against the dual standards that men still observe.
The Armed Forces can look after their own affairs; we are speaking now of civilians. I think that we shall have to return to the idea of as much education as possible, which will probably have to begin at a lower age level, in the schools. When cases of V.D. are found, we shall have to bring great pressure to bear on those known to have it. But that pressure will not extend to the idea of their being informers on the person with whom they might have slept the previous night. One reads in the papers about people sleeping round.

Sir M. Galpern: I remind my right hon. Friend that the clinic system involves informers, because the person who comes to the clinic has to tell the social workers where to look for the other person involved.

Mr. Pannell: I have had a great deal to do with social workers and have been chairman of committees of social workers. Generally speaking, they are trained in their work just as any other professional people are trained. They certainly know that confidentiality is the basis of their work.

Sir M. Galpern: Informers.

Mr. Pannell: They are not informers any more than policemen are informers. Social workers are not informers. They may go to a social contact and say, "Will you go on this?". But that is very different from serving a notice which might go astray to an employer, for example. I expressed some doubts about the White Paper, "In Place of Strife", because of the attachment orders suggested. I know

how hit-and-miss affairs attachment orders are. It would be very unfriendly of me if I were to suggest that my hon. Friend has not brought this Bill forward with the best possible motives. But it was Ramsay MacDonald who said, "It is not consequences you have to worry about, but the consequences of the consequences…". The consequences here could be pretty grim.
The Bill would breach our history, particularly that of the women's movements—and women would be the principal sufferers—and would breach the basis of confidentiality. There are surely other ways to achieve what my hon. Friend wants and I must therefore end in the way that the Association of Municipal Corporations asks me to end—by expressing the point of view that it would be better if the Bill did not make any further progress.
The Government should consider legislation to deal with this great social evil in a far more comprehensive manner than is considered in the Bill. If my hon. Friend has stimulated the Government into that degree of activity, then his exercise will have been well worth the effort.

2.2 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Bell: I owe the hon. Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern), and the House, an apology for coming to speak without having heard his speech. It was only because he rose at the regrettably inconvenient hour of 1.15 p.m., and since the House does not adjourn for lunch inevitably some people interested in an item of business will be in the dining room when it starts. Furthermore, although I have to say that I do not agree to the Bill, I, too, take it for granted that he has promoted it with the best possible motives.
Like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), I cannot feel that the Bill should go through and become law and enforced. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is particularly concerned with women and their organisations, but I think that this Bill could work all ways. There is nothing in it about confidentiality, and I do not think that there could be, because this kind of procedure is bound to


go through clerical and filing departments of local authorities. There would be no confidentiality about it at all. It would lay anyone open to the most appalling blackmail or even just malevolence—even to a practical joke. It would be a rather effective practical joke, though deplorable. We just cannot expose the citizen to this kind of thing.
The detriment which comes from venereal diseases is obvious and regrettable, but I do not think that we can do much about it by legislation, whether introduced by the Government or by a private Member. We can do a good deal about it by education and by administrative arrangements, but legislation will never play a major part in the campaign which must be waged against these diseases.
With the feeling that this Measure would be an incursion upon freedom and—even more than that—upon the personal safety and the reputation of the individual, I could not possibly endorse it. Even though I did not have the advantage of hearing the hon. Gentleman's speech, I am sure that there was nothing in it in favour of the Bill which could have changed my views.

Sir M. Galpern: I am sorry that the hon. and learned Gentleman was not here. I am sure that, had he listened to my speech, his decision would be the reverse of the one he has arrived at.

Mr. Bell: The hon. Gentleman flatters both himself and me by implying that he could have persuaded me and that I am so open minded that I would have been persuaded. But I do not think that I would have been persuaded, because I think that I understand the implications of the Bill. While I understand his motives, I also understand the machinery by which the Bill must inevitably operate, and that machinery could never be acceptable to me. To my regret, therefore, I must oppose the Bill.

2.8 p.m.

Mr. Laurence Pavitt: One of the differences between the world as it was when I was a teenager and the world of today is that, in my day, we said, "Nothing succeeds like success", whereas it seems that in the world today nothing succeeds like sex. Running

throughout this debate there has been the tendency to look at teenagers as though they and not we made the world in which they find themselves. We discuss the Bill against the background of the whole accent given, in advertising, for example, to sex. One cannot go down the escalator in the underground without seeing that the whole accent is placed on sexual relationships, even if twice removed by way of underwear. It becomes difficult for us, in tackling an important subject like this, if we are immediately to opt out of the responsibility we have.
The House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern) for giving it the opportunity to look at this extremely important matter. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) spoke for all of us in saying that none of us doubts the aim my hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston has in mind and that we all share the hop that we shall be able to do something about it. Running throughout the debate is condemnation, contained in the suggestion that there has been a big increase in recent years in these diseases, whereas, as I think most right hon. and hon. Members know, this problem has been ever with us. Indeed, my hon. Friend said so. He said that it is ever topical.
This is also part of the problem when dealing with health matters in relation to venereal diseases, for one encounters attitudes with moral overtones, involving some judgment, whether Victorian or otherwise. All these are newsworthy and are able to get discussions, whereas in the rest of the health field some of the killers in our midst cannot get the same amount of attention.
My hon. Friend spoke of the difficulty of drafting legislation. Most of us who have had to tackle the problem share his view and it is time that the House helped hon. Members with their legislation. But, it may be some consolation to my hon. Friend that I got on to the Statute Book last year a Measure with no help in drafting. It took me three years, but I think that this Bill would take much longer than that.
My hon. Friend referred to a number of tables in the Report of the Chief Medical Officer of Health. Although he


was right to say that the problem was important and that in some areas it had increased, it would be wrong to ignore the fact that the tables for other areas show a decrease. Table C.3 on page 281 shows that the incidence of congenital syphilis dealt with for the first time fell from 1,223 in 1950 to 216 in 1967. Table C.2 and table C.4 show a decrease in the figures to which they relate. Mortality from congenital syphilis among live births decreased from ·003 per 1,000, a very small figure in relation to the population, in 1912 to less than ·001. I am not playing down the problem and we should not underestimate that there has been an increase in the difficulties, but it is important to get it into perspective.

Mr. C. Pannell: The global figures show a diminuation from the high figures during the war, but an upsurge in the last ten years.

Mr. Pavitt: That is so. Nevertheless, the curve flattens out. One of the most encouraging parts of the Report is that the curves for both gonorrhoea and syphilis flattened out from 1966 onwards. The figures for 1966 were more cheerful than those for 1965, while those for 1967 were more cheerful than those for 1966. There was a fairly consistent upsurge until 1965, but there is a little gleam of hope to be derived from the flattening-out of the curve since then.
I echo much of what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West. The problem is to ascertain whether the Bill's designs will achieve the result which my hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston intends. We have had the experience of garrison towns when notification was compulsory and enforceable, but I am informed by my own local medical officer of health that experience then was infinitely less satisfactory than under the present voluntary system. Most medical officers of health will endorse that view.
It is one thing to have compulsion and quite another in an area as sensitive as this to stem the spread of venereal disease through contacts. I am aware of the work in hospitals of the North-West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board and I am satisfied that its social worker approach in the last few years has been

highly successful. It is true that it becomes a kind of detective work, but trained social workers are able to deal with these delicate matters and are able to secure confidence and the kind of information required and to establish where the contacts are in a way which would not be possible with the provisions of Clause 1 with legal sanctions and all that that implies.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston that there is an absolutely outdated approach to special clinics. One can go into hospitals within a stone's throw of this place, across the river and elsewhere, and walk down back corridors, to reach signs saying "Males" and "Females", rather like a public lavatory, but not so elegant. Notices advertising the treatment of venereal disease are to be found mainly in public lavatories. We still approach this matter with a kind of Victorian "Get thee behind me, Satan".
We do not give it the same approach which we adopt in other health matters, the kind of approach which we have achieved with mental health. There was a similar attitude to mental health some years ago. It was thought that it had to be shut away behind bleak walls. But in the last 20 years we have made mental health an ordinary health problem. We have brought it into the open. People are treated not only in mental but in general hospitals, and also remaining in the community. This has solved some of the difficulties of mental illness in the same way as with bodily illness. Venereal disease is another type of illness with which the community has to deal, and should deal with it in a far more open and forthright way.
One thing I commend teenagers and the younger generation for is that they have lost the kind of hypocrisy which many of us had in our younger days. They are prepared to look at these things openly when we regarded them as something furtive and secretive. My hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston made that apparent when he quoted some of the statements by young people caught up in this tragic disease. We have to keep it in proportion.
We have a tendency to imagine that all teenagers are somehow caught up in sex and drugs. There is an increase in venereal disease and an increase in


promiscuity. But last night I was heartened when I went to a prize-giving at Willesden College of Engineering and Technology. A hall was crammed with people and, as the principal was giving his report, I looked at the teenagers and thought of the popular headlines of the popular Press. But the principal reported that more than 1 million study hours were undertaken within the precincts last year. Every morning, about 1,600 students attended the college and evening classes had comparable numbers. One can go to the Royal Festival Hall to hear a Bach concert and find 3,000 youngsters, many of them teenagers. But those things do not get the headlines.
In our approach to venereal disease and how to deal with a problem which affects youngsters as it affects us, we have to keep the matter in proportion and not use phrases which are too emotive, such as, "In my young day, we did not do anything like that." In my young day, many things went on under-cover, things which these days are done far more openly and which are much more part of the scene. It may be because of that that there are more elderly fears about these things.
But the increase in the incidence of venereal disease cannot be ignored. There were 41,829 cases of gonorrhoea last year affecting 37,849 people. Gonorrhoea seems to be the most difficult problem that the medical profession had to tackle in the whole range of venereal diseases. But an analysis of the tables shows that only 15 per cent. of those affected were between the ages of 16 and 19, that is, 5,503, and nearly 20,000 people were over the age of 24. The statistics, therefore, do not show that this is a problem confined to teenagers.
I was interested in the comment of the Chief Medical Officer of Health that:
It is satisfactory to note that the returns for 1967 show a further decline in cases of infectious syphilis indicating that the spread of this disease, which has proved so intractable in other countries, is being contained here".
That is why I listened with interest to the account of the homework undertaken by my hon. Friend into what had happened in other countries. Although the disease is increasing in other countries, it is being contained here. The

Chief Medical Officer of Health went on to say:
On the other hand, as will appear from the details which follow, gonorrhoea has shown a further sharp increase in both men and women and the prospect of an early solution seems to be remote.
That is why I can understand my hon. Friend bringing forward the Bill in an attempt to find a solution which now seems remote.

Mr. C. Pannell: My hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston mentioned 44 other countries. I do not have his acquaintance with the figures, but over a long number of years those countries with notification has had curves going up similarly to ours, with a retraction from the last war and then an upsurge.

Mr. Pavitt: That is borne out by examination. The World Health Organisation has done extremely good work which bears out what my right hon. Friend says. However, as the Chief Medical Officer of Health has said, there has been a decline in the incidence of syphilis since then. The curve is flattening out and the evidence is that it can be contained, but the problem is that as fast as we defeat bacteria and viruses so they seem to put on extra "muscles" and we then have to find stronger drugs for stronger diseases.
A plea has been made today that we cannot spend too much on research in this problem. In the Annual Report, we get further information which is salutary in view of the fact that prostitution has now been driven from the streets of Piccadilly. On page 71, we read that of 102 prostitutes admitted to Holloway Prison in 1967 aged between 15 and 20, 61 submitted themselves to examination and 38 proved to have infection, three from syphilis and 35 from gonorrhoea. So it would seem that it is not only the social problem which must be solved, the promiscuity which might take place in all kinds of circumstances and places, but also the whole problem of prostitution. This is no doubt one of the sources which will have to be thoroughly tackled. I recognise that this goes beyond my hon. Friend's Department to the Home Office.
The House has been generally united about health education. We realise that perhaps the most constructive thing that we can do, whether or not the Bill goes


further, is to continue health education. I commend to the House the article of the noble Baroness Birk in this month's Nova, a magazine which is more likely to be read by teenagers than either The Times or The Guardian. On the front cover it has a picture of the bare-bottomed Beatle who got married yesterday; within, it has the other attributes which may attract young people, and there are four excellent pages on venereal diseases which young people will read.
One of the first articles that I have read for some time, about sense in sex, was in The Guardian on Wednesday by Catherine Storr. This was an amazing and very perceptive approach. I immediately wanted to cut it out and send it to my children, because that was the kind of thing that I wanted to tell them. But they are unlikely to appreciate it for it is written in my generation terms. They will easily read Nova, which is in the language that they understand.
Therefore, when my hon. Friend is considering education, I hope that he will not do so only in a narrow and academic way. This must spread. The aim of education is to communicate with those who one is trying to educate. Education is not for the educators but for those whom one is seeking to impress with ideas. In those circumstances, we must use the channels of communications which are acceptable to young people today, if it is the young people that we are trying to reach. Therefore, I commend Nova, which is a very with-it kind of magazine, and the way in which this media can provide an extension of understanding of important problems.
We still have to face the provision of research, and I shall be very surprised if the Medical Research Council is short of funds for venereal research. My hon. Friend quoted a venereologist who said that, if he had £50,000 more, he could do a tremendous job. But my experience in the fields in which the Medical Research Council operates convinces me that projects which have a fair chance of success are not kept short of funds. My hon. Friend will obviously deal with this, and I look forward to what he will say.
In the Chief Medical Officer's Report, we read:

Non-gonococcal urethritis remains an intractable problem. The cause of it is unknown and the evidence that it is a transmissible infection is therefore based on epidemiological experience. But the evidence is very strong.
In a case like this, when one knows the question but knows that doctors do not have the answer, a little pressure could be put on the Department of Education and Science for the Medical Research Council to advance special projects in this field.
Research for earlier diagnosis in gonorrhoea is essential. The problem with gonorrhoea is the very short incubation period when the infection shows no symptoms but when the disease can be imparted. A classical case is given in the Minister's Report, of the holiday camp where, in 1967, one case led to ten, but by the time the ten were traced, three had already disappeared.
In the rapidly changing social situation and with the gap between the generations, I came to the Bill with a fairly open mind, though with a leaning against it. After hearing the debate, I am convinced that this is not the way to get the results that my hon. Friend wants. The changing social pattern is extremely fluid and the way in which human relationships are developing is something with which we have difficulty in keeping pace. Things move almost as fast as my hon. Friend (Mr. David Ennals) moves from the Elephant and Castle to John Adam Street and back again to the Elephant and Castle.
Although we might applaud my hon. Friend today, I hope that the Bill will not be given a Second Reading, but that we shall hear something constructive from the Ministry about the way in which the things which have been mutually agreed across the House about education and research will be given an added fillip as a result of this discussion.

2.27 p.m.

Mr. Antony Buck: The hon. Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern) is always listened to with great attention in the House because of his distinguished service both to the House and to local government north of the Border, and he has done the House a service in bringing forward the very serious social problem of the diseases under the sordid heading of


"venereal disease". However, we on this side think that his suggested methods of dealing with some of these problems are not acceptable for a variety of reasons. One of the most cogent is that mentioned by my hon, and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell)—the whole question of confidentiality.
There are other reasons which cause me to say that this method is not satisfactory. I do not find it acceptable, for instance, that a person who has contracted venereal disease should be encouraged to become an informer to the doctor about the person from whom he suspects he may have contracted it, when the end result could be criminal proceedings. Nor do I find it acceptable that the doctor should be put in a semi-judicial position. Clause 1 would put upon him some duty to assess, the reasonableness or otherwise of the patient's suggestion that it might have been a certain named person who gave him the disease. This puts the doctor in an invidious position, and must make a semi-judicial decision on evidence of the most unsatisfactory type—suspicions communicated to him in private.
Similarly, the medical officer of health would also be in an invidious position. By the terms of the Bill, he would have to assess the reasonableness or otherwise of the suspicions of two or more persons which might have been transmitted to him.
I do not find it acceptable that we should create a criminal offence in the circumstances set out in the Bill. I do not find it acceptable that it should be a criminal offence not to submit for examination or treatment. One foresees a legion of difficulties leading to blackmail, and so on, which could arise. To suggest that it should be a criminal offence punishable, under Clause 6, by a fine of up to £50 or imprisonment not exceeding two months if one has refused to submit to examination or treatment is not acceptable, especially when the offence which is created seems to be absolute. A demand could be made that a person should attend for examination in spite of the fact that there might be no evidence that he or she had a disease of any type. This is invidious. It seems to us, therefore, that the Bill offends against the principles of natural justice, and, in addition, is not acceptable on grounds of practicality.
The best method of approach to deal with the problems is in the way suggested by the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt). I know that the sponsor of the Bill accepts that the best way is to continue to ensure that there is ample health education concerning these matters and research on them. I hope today's debate will have contributed to the knowledge on these serious problems which have been put in perspective both by the sponsor of the Bill and by the hon. Member for Willesden, West, to whose speech we have listened with such interest.

The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Mr. David Ennals): I would like to start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern) on his initiative in bringing forward the Bill. He has heard a number of criticisms of it, and I shall emphasise some of them. The House, is however, indebted to him for having raised the problem in the way he has done. He has done a great deal of research and has spoken from a wealth of experience and background, which the House always appreciates.
My hon. Friend rightly said that we are dealing with a problem in which ignorance is, perhaps, one of the most significant factors. One of the main reasons why I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing forward the Bill is that the very debate and the points which have been brought out by hon. Members on both sides may help to dispel some of the ignorance by bringing the facts out into the open.
I want to start by considering the question of how serious the problems are and looking at some of the statistics which have been mentioned and, perhaps, adding some of my own. Certainly, venereal diseases have increased throughout the world in recent years. That is the situation not only in this country. But in Britain, there are relatively few cases of syphilis, and the numbers are tending to decline.
The numbers which I am about to give are of cases that were dealt with for the first time at clinics. In 1950, 5,979 males were treated for syphilis. The total fell to 2,401 in 1960. In 1966 it was 2,454, and it fell further to 2,434 in 1967.


In 1950 the number of females was 4,988, and it fell to as low as 1,169 in 1967. We can, therefore, see that there has been a dramatic decrease in syphilis in the early 1950s and subsequently a tendency to decrease more slowly.
My hon. Friend was quite right to point out that the cases of gonorrhoea have been increasing in number year by year during the late 1950s. They seemed to have stabilised in the 1960s, but in the last couple of years they have substantially risen. In 1950, 17,007 males were reported for treatment. The number rose to 26,618, in 1960, to 27,921 in 1966 and to 30,645 in 1967. I do not, of course have the figures for 1968. For females, the number rose from 3,497 in 1950 to as high as 11,184 in 1967. That is a total of 41,829, which is the largest figure since 1946, which was the post-war peak. My hon. Friend was quite correct in suggesting that during the war the figures had been very high, for reasons which one can well understand.
Perhaps I might put the figures in another way, and for this purpose I draw upon the memorandum from which my hon. Friend quoted. In 1967, of all young people aged from 16 to 19 inclusive, one in 500 boys and one in 440 girls were known to have contracted gonorrhoea. One in 15,700 boys and one in 32,300 girls contracted syphilis. Of those aged from 20 to 24 inclusive, one in 190 men and one in 450 women were known to have contracted gonorrhoea. One in 7,900 men and one in 23,200 women had contracted syphilis.
It would be wrong, therefore, to think that this is a disease which affects only the teenager. I am glad that this point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt). In his Report for 1967, the Chief Medical Officer said that venereal diseases were mainly prevalent not in the under-20 age group but among adults between 20 and 30.
Probably the most important factor which explains the increase in gonorrhoea especially is promiscuity in sexual relationships. A further factor is that modern methods of contraception, which today provide no element of mechanical protection, may favour the spread of

gonorrhoea. Perhaps the use of the Pill may well have led or contributed to the increase in recent times.
This is certainly not an issue in which there is any degree of complacency in my Department. On the contrary, this is a situation which causes us a good deal of concern, and we are anxious that there should be a tightening and an improving of the methods which have been practised in this country and which our Department believes to be the proper ones.
The memorandum to which my hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston referred is a very recent document and was issued only in November last year. It was sent out with a circular from my Department to local health authorities drawing to their attention the proposals and information in the memorandum. It was a memorandum which had been approved by the Secretary of State's Standing Medical Advisory Committee. It made a number of important proposals for strengthening procedures and was sent not only to local authorities but to hospital authorities, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West said, have an important part to play in this problem.
In moving the Second Reading of his Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston referred to the shortage, as he suggested, of facilities for treatment. I should like to assure him that my evidence is that there are adequate facilities both for diagnosis and for treatment under the National Health Service.
Perhaps I might say a little more about the method which we believe to be the proper way of tackling this social and medical problem. The present system of control and treatment of venereal disease is based on persuasion and voluntary cooperation, and, on the whole, it is working well. The control of venereal disease depends primarily for success on the speedy and effective tracing of potential sources of infection; and I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston referred to the paragraph in the memorandum which dealt with the importance of speed.

Mr. Pavitt: Would my hon. Friend confirm that when people are persuaded to use the National Health Service there


will be no question of their being charged half-a-crown per prescription when they attend special clinics?

Mr. Ennals: I would not like to give my hon. Friend an incorrect answer, and as I cannot confirm that off-hand I will give him the information later.
I was talking about the importance of speed and efficacy. The aim of contact tracing is to ensure that the sexual contacts of people with venereal disease are identified and persuaded to attend a clinic for examination and, if necessary, treatment. Under contact tracing, the patient provides information to an interviewer at the clinic, who may follow up the case in person or may pass the information to a contact tracer. The contact tracer subsequently tries to seek out the contact and persuade him or her to obtain medical advice. If this person is infected, the process is then repeated.
Interviewers and contact tracers are usually employed by local health authorities, and it is accepted that they need special qualities to do their work, whatever their professional background. Both tasks call for tact and patience and, on occasion, courage and resource. While personal qualities are a primary requirement, many of the employing authorities consider that qualifications as a nurse or a trained social worker are essential. An increasing number of those involved in this important work now have training either in social work or as nurses.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) rightly pointed out, success in contact tracing depends on confidence between patients, doctors, contacts, contact tracers and the staff of the health services in general. For this reason hospital authorities have been obliged by law since 1948 to keep information about patients confidential.
New regulations made in October, 1968, however, amended this rule to permit information to be passed to a doctor or person employed by a doctor in connection with the treatment of venereal disease or the prevention of its spread. This was done to facilitate the development of contact tracing. This is an important development which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston did not mention.
In the view of the Government, the threat of ratification and compulsion of

contacts is likely to deter some patients from seeking treatment at venereal disease clinics. In our view, it is also likely to disturb the cordial relationship between venereologists and their patients, and particularly between contact tracers and the communities from which they seek to persuade named contacts to present themselves for medical advice.
Local authorities are participating in contact tracing to an increasing degree, and the contact tracers themselves would be the last to agree that compulsion would help them in their difficult work. I will come to some of the representations that we have received from those who are involved in this work—this is a delicate and developing task—and they make it clear that their efforts would, they believe be hindered if we adopted my hon. Friend's proposal.
The Bill would institute a system, as my hon. Friend explained, of compulsory notification, similar to Regulation 33B, which was issued as an Order in Council in 1942 under the Defence Regulations, 1939. It is understandable that such measures were taken during the war because, as I indicated, there was a substantial increase in the incidence of venereal disease, largely because a large number of men from the Armed Forces of many countries were located here. They were away from their wives, sexual relationships were on an extremely free basis, so to speak, and, of course, this led to a substantial rise in the incidence of venereal disease.
It is, therefore, fair to say that we had considerable experience of this sort of experiment during the war. Regulation 33B defined as a Special Practitioner a doctor who was qualified under the Local Government Regulations of 1930 as a venereal disease officer, or who was a specialist in venereal disease in H.M. Forces, or who was designated by the Minister of Health for the purpose of the Regulations. The Regulation laid upon this special practitioner the duty of notifying information gained from his infected patients as to suspected sources of infection to the medical officer of health for the county or county borough in which the person who was the suspected source resided.
If the medical officer of health received notification from two or more patients concerning the same suspected


source, his duty was to serve the person concerned with a notice stating that that person might require treatment for venereal disease and requiring him or her to submit to examination by a special practitioner within a specified period. In due course, the special practitioner either sent a certificate to the medical officer of health to the effect that the individual suspected was free from infection or served a notice on the individual requiring him or her to attend for treatment or for further tests. The patient concerned had the right to change his or her special practitioner, subject to the obligation to notify the medical officer of health of the details of the change. In the case of default, the medical officer of health was notified by the special practitioner.
The object of Regulation 33B was twofold. First, it was designed to bring under medical care those infectious persons who had shown themselves unresponsive to educational work or to methods of persuasion and who, owing to their refusal to undertake treatment, remained a constant source of danger to the health of the community. Secondly, the regulation was designed to make it an offence for any person indicated as the source of the infection by two or more separate patients under treatment, after being required to undergo examination or treatment, to fail to do so or to cease treatment until certified as not suffering from the disease in a communicable form.
My hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston said that this had been a successful experiment. Indeed, it was a most unsuccessful one. Perhaps if it had been successful my Department and others concerned might have looked with more favour on the proposal which my hon. Friend has made.
In fact, the experiment did not work. On 13th May, 1943, after six months' experience of the working of the regulation, the matter was raised in Parliament with the then Minister of Health, who in answering Questions from several hon. Members reported that 36 men and 475 women had been reported to medical officers of health as alleged sources of venereal infection, of which one man and 27 women had been the subject of more

than one report—not a large number in the course of six months at a time when venereal diseases were at a high level. The Minister said on that occasion that no civilian voluntarily undergoing treatment for venereal disease was subject to compulsion to complete it.
The necessity for two separate notifications before action could be taken was the stumbling block to the efficacy of the regulation. Since the vast majority of people were concerned in only one report, many councils authorised their officers to make an unofficial approach on receipt of notification, and in such a case a visit was made by an appropriate visiting officer and the regulation was not used. When the regulation was allowed to expire, on 31st December, 1947, it had singularly failed to achieve its purpose. It is possible that at that time there were those who would have argued that, since its weakness was that it made provision for two notifications, it would have been better had the regulation been based on one notification only, but I think this would have been more likely to lead to the dangers that have been referred to by my hon. Friends during the debate.
By making compulsory treatment dependent upon the suspicions of two or more patients with venereal disease, the Bill opens up the possibility of individuals being the object of false information or of blackmail. The hon. and learned Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) spoke about the practical joke. This is a real danger, and it would require only two people to play a very unpleasant joke on an innocent person by notifying that the person was, according to their information, a contact and infected with the disease for that person to be put in an acutely embarrassing position. But, worse than that, if the medical officer of health were convinced of the correctness of the evidence given, and if that person were not prepared to meet the requirements of the Bill, he might then face penalties. We could not put on the Statute Book a Bill which laid us open to that sort of danger, whether it be of genuine false information or, worse still, of the practical joker.
Although the Bill does not place a duty on the medical officer of health unless it appears to him that there is reasonable cause to believe that the disease was so


contracted, there is a danger that a successful conspiracy could be established, not just a joke, but a genuine and determined attempt to damage a person's reputation. Such a conspiracy could open the way to blackmail of a most unpleasant kind. I should not like to detail in the House the situations in which a person might say, "Unless you do a, b, c, or d, or unless you pay me a, b, c, or d, then I will ensure that you are notified, rightly or wrongly, as being liable to the provisions of the Bill." While I greatly respect the sincerity of my hon. Friend in bringing forward the Bill, I shall ask the House not to give it a Second Reading.
Many hon. Members have laid stress on health education. This is absolutely right. We have first to ensure that the system of contact tracing is efficient, and this is the purpose of the memorandum which was sent to local authorities and hospital authorities. Secondly, we have to ensure that the sections of the general public 10 whom this applies are aware of the facilities which are open to them. There is little point in their being suitable clinical facilities for diagnosis and treatment if the persons concerned do not know that they can, without fear of public knowledge, come forward freely for treatment. The clinics are open to everyone without payment for treatment. When my hon. Friend referred to prescription charges, he was referring to medicaments, to which I did not give him an answer, but treatment is entirely free.

Mr. Pavitt: I can assure my hon. Friend that patients are given medicines as well. There is no charge for prescriptions at special clinics.

Mr. Ennals: My hon. Friend, having posed the question, has now provided the answer, and I am delighted to confirm the accuracy of the information given by him.
Health education is of extreme importance. Although health education was not the main purpose of the memorandum to which earlier reference has been made, it was touched on in paragraph 5, which reads:
Sources of information are much more likely to be traced if public awareness of the problem is fully aroused by active health education. The screening of special groups is important, e.g. routine testing of pregnant women to reduce still further the now infrequent

pre-natal or neo-natal infections and persuading prostitutes, both male and female, to attend regularly for examination as a means of controlling the major sources of acquired infection. Speedy contact tracing is the method most likely to produce quick results; female contacts brought under treatment, especially if they are promiscuous, contribute a disproportionately high degree of success to the control of infection".
It is interesting, as that paragraph points out, that not only female prostitutes but male prostitutes can create a danger of this disease.
This problem falls upon the Health Education Council, whose work is now expanding, and I hope that with more substantial funds at its disposal it will use a good deal of imagination in dealing with this. My hon. Frend was right to point out that in educational matters we must bring ourselves up to date and use imagination and modern techniques to bring the message home.
The Health Education Council maintains close contacts with, and actively participates in the work of, the British Federation Against the Venereal Diseases which is a body which emphasises the importance of public education. This very afternoon, while I am speaking, the Director-General of the Council and his senior officers are attending a meeting of the Federation to discuss future developments. In addition, the Council has recently instituted a research programme in association with Dr. William Belson, the Director of the Survey Research Centre of the London School of Economics, into the effectiveness of various kinds of health education methods. In the meantime, the Council is continuing to make available to local authorities and others existing leaflets, posters and other materials, including film strips.
Reference has been made to the views of many bodies. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West referred to the Josephine Butler Society. This was formerly the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene which was founded by Josephine Butler as long ago as 1870. The Josephine Butler Society has recorded its views against the Bill in strong terms, and I will read two paragraphs from a letter which sets out its views:
In 1947 the Minister of Health decided not to renew the Regulation 33B because, far from preventing the spread of venereal disease and reducing its incidence, it discouraged those who feared they might have contracted the


disease from seeking examination and treatment. The strictly confidential relationship between doctor and patient was seriously undermined. Moreover, since the complainants remain anonymous, the Regulation is a gross violation of British justice, because it deprives the named contacts of the legal protection afforded to all other persons against defamation of character, whilst gravely infringing individual liberty and human rights. It is, moreover, contrary to Article VI of the United Nations Convention (passed in 1949) for the Suppression of Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of others.
A number of other representations have been made against some of the provisions in the Bill. The only other one to which I want to refer is from the National Council of Women. My right hon. Friend referred to the great concern of women's organisations if the Bill were to become law.
The National Council of Women says:
Regulation 33B created a precedent in that the private informer provided the basis without which it could not operate. The informing patient remains anonymous, but the contact becomes a suspected person who can only clear himself or herself by the indignity of submitting to a compulsory medical examination. The Bill creates an offence with penalties if the contact fails to attend for or submit to medical examination. This is a grave infringement of human freedom and a human right. Moreover a false name may be given either by a genuine mistake or by deliberate malice and, because of the anonymity, the contact has no redress for defamation of character.
Venereal disease is usually a physical consequence of anti-social behaviour and therefore any proposals for its control must be examined for their effect upon the amount of promiscuity. If promiscuous persons mistakenly suppose the State's Regulations will ensure them a clean bill of health, irresponsible behaviour and the spread of the disease will be encouraged.
While I greatly respect the intentions of my hon. Friend, many of which will have been achieved by the publicity that the debate will have given to the facts of the situation and the concern which is felt, I cannot advise the House to support the Bill. The best policy is to see

that the recommendations made in the circular sent out in November are fully carried out to ensure that the new stimulus which has been given by my Department to contact tracing is made effective. I assure my hon. Friend that we shall review the situation after a reasonable period of time to see whether new initiatives are required.
With that assurance, I hope my hon. Friend will not feel it necessary to press his Bill. I can assure him that the Government are as much concerned as he is about the problem before us, and are anxious to take effective steps. However, I do not think we should attempt to put on the Statute Book a Measure with the social dangers which, inadvertently, my hon. Friend's Bill would create.

Sir M. Galpern: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman needs the leave of the House to speak again, but I think that he will get it if he asks for it.

Sir M. Galpern: Mr. Speaker, with the leave of the House, may I say that I am very glad to have had an opportunity to ventilate this urgent social problem. We have had a very useful debate, and I am grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have participated and made such interesting contributions.
I am still not satisfied that contact tracing will be the ultimate solution in our fight against this scourge. Nevertheless, I fully appreciate that my hon. Friend's Department is gravely concerned about the situation, as we all are.
In view of the assurances that he has given about further investigation into the whole question of trying to contain venereal diseases, I ask leave to withdraw the Bill.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Bill withdrawn.

HOUSE OF COMMONS REDISTRIBUTION OF SEATS (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

3.4 p.m.

Sir Cyril Black: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The time available for this debate is limited. Therefore, I will be brief and, I hope, uncontroversial.
The Bill is short, simple and fair. It deals with an obvious defect and inadequacy in present electoral arrangements. It deals, in fact, with a matter of electoral justice and is not, therefore, in any sense a party measure. It is in no party spirit that I seek to commend it to the House. But where electoral justice is involved, it is a matter of concern to Members of all parties sitting in all parts of the Chamber.
The principle of one man one vote has been for long axiomatic in this country. But the principle becomes meaningless unless the votes are of approximately equal value. If in one constituency, for instance, it takes five times as many votes to elect a Member as in another, this makes a mockery of the principle of one man one vote.
It was to deal with this particular matter that the procedure for the review of Parliamentary constituencies was brought into being. Under this procedure, as the House will know, reviews take place from time to time. The last General Review was in 1954—fifteen years ago. The purpose of the reviews is quite obvious. Stated briefly, it is to keep the electorates of the constituencies as nearly equal in size as is conveniently possible.
It will be within the knowledge of the House that the boundaries of Parliamentary constituencies are currently being reviewed, as the law requires. This is obviously necessary as substantial population movements have taken place and serious disparities and inequalities in the sizes of the electorates of constituencies have developed. I would assume that the past 15 years has seen one of the largest movements of population about the United Kingdom as has possibly ever

been known in any similar previous period. The result is that there is now a serious disparity in the size of the electorates of the constituencies.
I will give only two or three examples from the many that could be quoted. Some constituencies, like Billericay and Portsmouth, Langstone, have swollen to twice the national average. Others, like Glasgow, Kelvingrove and Birmingham, Ladywood, are too small.
It is interesting to note that the late Member for Birmingham, Ladywood had only to poll less than 9,000 votes in 1966 to get elected, whereas the runner-up in Billericay polled over 38,000 votes but was nevertheless defeated.
This, on every ground, is a very serious position. Perhaps the most serious aspect is that it tends to destroy the faith of the public at large in the justice of the democratic principles by which Members are elected to this House. When faith in democracy is shaken in this way, the consequences cannot be other than altogether evil.
The Boundary Commissioners, which have now had this matter under active review, must complete their General Review by November, 1969, but it is anticipated that they will report much earlier than the latest permitted date.
My Bill deals simply with what happens after they have reported. The present law requires that after the Commissions have reported the Home Secretary shall present Orders to Parliament to implement the recommendations "as soon as may be". This phrase is so vague that it imposes no obligation on the Home Secretary to present the Orders at any time at all. The phrase is simply "as soon as may be". This imposes no limit of any kind on the dilatoriness of a Home Secretary—or a Government—who believes that the proposed alterations in boundaries might be disadvantageous to his party. The Government of the time can, of course, refrain indefinitely from implementing the recommendations, that is to say for so long as they may be able to remain in power, and to remain in power on the basis of the votes of electorates which are obviously unsatisfactory electorates. This, by any measure, is a most unsatisfactory position.
It is my endeavour throughout to introduce this matter with a maximum of light


and a minimum of heat. I make no imputation whatever against the present Home Secretary in respect of a dilatoriness which has not yet occurred. But it is obviously wrong that any Government or any Home Secretary of any party should be able to delay an urgently necessary review of Parliamentary boundaries for any reason, least of all for the reason of party advantage.
The purpose of my Bill is to deal with this obvious deficiency in the law, to impose a time limit of two months instead of the words "as soon as may be", so that there is an obligation on the Home Secretary for the time being to make his Orders in the House within a limited period.
I should like to demonstrate my great desire to be most reasonable in this matter by saying that if a case can be made to show that for procedural reasons two months is an inadequate period, I should be very susceptible to a suggestion in Committee that the period might be extended to three, or possibly even four months. This is a matter of concern to all hon. Members. It goes to the root of democratic practice, and we have the opportunity today in this simple Bill in the time that remains to take the first step to put the matter right.
We often hear strong criticisms from hon. Members—I do not criticise them for this in any way—of other Governments who exercise a sway in distant parts of the world when it is alleged that those Governments are not complying with proper democratic practices in their own electoral arrangements. If it is desired that we should be in a position to make this kind of criticism of other countries and other Governments for which we have no responsibility, how much more is it necessary that we, as the House of Commons, should have clean hands in the matter of our own electoral arrangements?

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. Three hon. Members wish to intervene. The hon. Gentleman will have to choose which hon. Member he would like to interrupt him.

Sir C. Black: In as much as I am going to resume my seat in one minute,

Mr. Speaker, I think it would be better if I were to conclude my speech and leave the interveners with the hope of catching your eye.
This Bill speaks for itself. Its purpose is clear. Its justification is obvious, and it is difficult to see on what reasonable ground any Member can seek to oppose or obstruct a Bill that is so obviously necessary.

3.15 p.m.

Mr. Antony Buck: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) on having brought before the House this Bill which is succinct and easy to understand. It is quite obvious, in view of the way in which he has introduced the Bill, that the House should give it a Second Reading.
My hon. Friend's approach has been utterly reasonable. Should the Government say that the suggested period of two months during which they will have an opportunity of considering the recommendations is too short, my hon. Friend has indicated, with an infinity of reasonableness, that he is prepared to consider an Amendment to lengthen the period. This is an extraordinarily reasonable approach, so it seems that we should have agreement from the Government that the Bill should have a Second Reading so that the whole matter can be gone into in some detail.
Let us face the fact that there has been widespread speculation that the Government do not intend to act with expedition relative to the Boundary Commission's recommendations. It has been suggested widely in the Press—I have cuttings with me—that they do not intend to act with expedition because the Boundary Commission's recommendations may be to the Labour Party's disadvantage. Today the Government will have an opportunity to confound those suggestions that they intend to be dilatory about this matter for their political advantage. The best way they can do that is by allowing this Bill to have a Second Reading.
I hope that we shall have certain assurances from the Home Office today. The first assurance for which I ask is that the Government will not put forward, as an excuse for not implementing the Boundary Commission's recommendations speedily, the fact that in due course


a Royal Commission on Local Government is to report. I do not expect that any such excuse will be put forward by the Government. It would be particularly invidious if that were to be put forward in view of the latest information which I have, emanating from the Minister of Housing and Local Government, who is reported as having said, I believe in a speech at Truro, that the implementation of local government reform will probably not take place till 1973 or 1974. Therefore, it would obviously be absurd if any suggestion were made that the implementation of the Boundary Commission's recommendations must await the Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government. I should like a firm assurance from the Government that that is not their intention.
Second, we want an assurance from the Government that, in laying draft Orders based on the recommendations of the Boundary Commission, they will act, if not in weeks, at least within a very few months. It is the basis of my hon. Friend's Bill so to provide, and I hope that we shall have a firm assurance from the Government to that effect.
If we have assurances of that kind, the speculation and suggestions that there is likely to be procrastination here for party advantage will be set at rest, and I hope that the Minister present, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, for whom one has personal respect, will be able to give them.

Mr. Denis Coe: The hon. Gentleman says that he is in favour of the Bill. Will he tell us where the Official Opposition stand on the question of months? He speaks of two months. May we be told more specifically what the view of the official Opposition is?

Mr. Buck: That is precisely the sort of reason why we consider that the Bill should have a Second Reading, so that we may go into the whole question of how long is likely to be necessary. We do not assert, and neither does my hon. Friend, that two months is necessarily exactly right. We shall want to give detailed consideration to the question in Committee, assisted, no doubt, by the advice which can be drawn from the detailed researches which the Government will have made into it.
Is delay necessary? In the past, we had an example of a review in similar circumstances. That was in the mid-1950s, and the Conservative Home Secretary then, Mr. Gwilym Lloyd-George, acted with great expedition. Within two weeks of the Report, draft Orders were laid before the House. He was subject to some criticism for undue expedition in the matter, but the criticism centred largely on suggested faults in the original legislation, the 1949 Act, on which the procedure of the Committee was based. As a result of those criticisms, we had, by agreement, a later Measure, the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act, 1958, which largely put right the suggested procedural faults pointed out in the earlier debates.
Therefore, any criticism there might have been in the past that a Conservative Home Secretary acted with undue expedition would not apply now if a Home Secretary were to act with expedition, since the 1958 Act, a Measure passed without Division and with all-party support for its principal provisions, made it possible for the Commissions to adopt a better procedure, with local inquiries, and so on. This makes it much easier for the Government to act speedily when they receive the recommendation of the Commission. A Conservative Home Secretary acted within two weeks under the old Act. It would hardly become the Government to admit that they could not act within two months, and, as I have said, we are only too glad to discuss what the appropriate period should be.
This is an urgent matter. As Mr. David Wood pointed out in The Times as long ago as 1957, the present situation is undesirable, and by the mid-1970s it will have become outrageous. The Government must give the assurances for which I have asked. The health of our Constitution requires that constituency boundaries be subject to this continuing review.
It may be that the 1958 Act went too far in providing that the maximum period between reviews can be as long as 15 years. There is a case for saying that that is too long. But we are getting near the end of that 15-year period and we must have assurances from the Government that they will act with expedition. I expect that we shall have an assurance from them


that they have utter confidence in the Boundary Commission which in the case of England has Mr. Speaker as the Chairman, Mr. Justice Thesiger as Deputy Chairman, and a very distinguished composition.
The Government have had the advantage of preliminary draft reports which have been published and considered locally, so they know which way the Commission's thoughts are going over most of the country. Any additional homework that will have to be done when the final report comes out will not be very considerable. If the situation is not righted very speedily, our constitution could lose its credibility. It becomes utterly absurd when we have the sort of situation indicated by my hon. Friend of 93,000 electors in Hornchurch, 102,000 in Portsmouth, Langstone and 109,000 in Billericay while there are tiny constituencies like Manchester, Exchange with a mere 19,000 and Glasgow, Kelvingrove with 20,000. The problem becomes very serious when there is this contrast.

Mr. R. W. Brown: Is the hon. Gentleman also aware that as a result of this enormous review there are certain areas in London where the new figure is to be 70,000 or more? If he is complaining that figures of 80,000 or 90,000 are too high, is not it absurd to increase the electorate in some areas in London? He will know them as well as I do, because he has no doubt done his homework. Therefore, I cannot see his argument. Given that some are large, the reports now coming out show that some are to be made even larger.

Mr. Buck: What is needed is a much more sensible mean figure. The hon. Gentleman has discussed the draft reports. We shall see what comes out in the final Report. What he said is no argument against evening up, so far as is practicable. Under the 1958 Act, the terms of reference were made more flexible so that local considerations of boundaries, loyalties and so on could be taken more specifically into account. This was one of the improvements agreed upon by all parties. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's intervention does not take the matter much further. It is obviously

absurd to have some constituencies with electorates of 109,000 and others with a mere 19,000 or so. It is necessary, therefore, that the Government act with speed as soon as they receive the final Report.
When does the Minister expect to get it? One hears that it is likely to come very shortly. We hope that that will be later in the spring, but as today is officially about the first day of spring we must hope that it will be just a little on into the spring or early summer. We should like the assurance that as soon as the Report is received the Government will act with expedition in implementing what it recommends

3.27 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Merlyn Rees): It might be convenient if I intervene at this stage to give the Government's view on the Bill. Bills are usually introduced to bring about a change that is demonstrably necessary, to deal with something that has not been done in the past. But if the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) looks to the past, he will see that in the early 1950s the then Labour Government distributed themselves out of office. The first Tory Government in the early 1950s was a minority Government. Therefore, the past gives the hon. Gentleman no reason to believe that this side of the House is motivated by political considerations.

Sir C. Black: That was an admirable precedent.

Mr. Rees: That may be so, but it ill becomes the party opposite to suggest that it has never been done. The Labour Party Government know exactly what to do. We are fully aware of our statutory obligations.
The Bill seeks to make a simple amendment to Section 2(5) of the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act, 1949. Hon. Members have referred to the provisions of that subsection and I want to quote it in full because there are some aspects of it to which I shall refer. It says:
As soon as may be after a Boundary Commission have submitted a report to the Secretary of State under this Act, he shall lay the report before Parliament together, except in a case where the report states that no alternation is required to be made in respect of the part of the United Kingdom with which the Commission are concerned,


with the draft of an Order in Council for giving effect, whether with or without modifications, to the recommendations contained in the report.
The Bill would substitute the words,
Not more than two months
for the words,
as soon as may be".
Accordingly, the Secretary of State of the day would be required to comply with his responsibilities under the Statute within a specific period, no matter what circumstances then existed.
Let us, first, consider what those responsibilities are. A Commission reaches its final conclusions and completes its report. Arrangements then have to be made for it to be printed and distributed to both Houses together with draft Orders in Council. The Act refers to a single draft Order but it has been the practice to prepare several, each relating to a group of constituencies. The purpose of this has been to facilitate debate in Parliament.
The effect of the requirement in Section 2(5), combined with the practice of the laying of Statutory Instruments generally, is that both the reports and draft Orders in Council must be presented and published simultaneously. So, after a report is received, some time must be allowed for all the necessary printing to be done. This can be a major task in the case of a general review.
Section 2(5) contemplates that draft Orders in Council may modify the recommendations contained in a report. The words of the Subsection are
…together…with the draft of an Order in Council for giving effect, whether with or without modifications, to the recommendations contained in the report".
Clearly, then, Parliament contemplated that the Government of the day should examine a report of a Commission and reach its conclusions on it before bringing it to Parliament. Time is needed for that and for the preparation of the draft Orders in Council and also, as I have said, for their printing.
Then there is the provision in Section 3(5) of the 1949 Act which provides that where any draft Order in Council gives effect to the recommendations of a Commission with modifications, the Secretary of State must at the same time lay before Parliament the draft of a statement of the

reasons for the modifications. Accordingly, if modifications are proposed, time is needed for the preparation and printing of the statement. That is a brief outline of the administrative arrangements necessary following the submission of a report by a Boundary Commission. This Bill would allow a period of two months for their completion.
Section 2(5) of the 1949 Act is a consolidation of provisions which first appeared in Section 4(5) of the House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act, 1944, following a recommendation made by Mr. Speaker's Conference in May, 1944—Command Paper No. 6534, Recommendation No. 23. There was also a similar provision in Section 2 of the 1944 Act relating specifically to a review of abnormally large constituencies, which was a procedure followed at the time.
The hon. Member for Wimbledon has not provided evidence of an unjustified delay in the past. Indeed, he and the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Buck) told us that the purpose of the Bill was to seek an assurance from the Government about their intentions with respect to the present general review. I remind the House, however, that the change proposed by the Bill will affect the reports not only of that review, but all reports made by the Commissions in future.
I return to what appears to be the main purpose of the Bill—to obtain some assurance from the Government that constituency boundaries will be altered before the next general election. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary dealt with this matter during the debate on electoral law on 14th October. He said, in effect, that the Government had taken no decisions in this matter and that they saw no reason to do so in advance of receiving the Commissions' reports; that he proposed to wait for the reports, give appropriate consideration to them and to bring the Government's conclusions before the House. He also indicated that, if the Commissions did not report until the autumn of 1969, the Reports of the Royal Commissions on Local Government in England and Scotland, which are also awaited, would be a factor which would need to be taken into account.
That is still the position. Neither the Reports of the Royal Commissions on Local Government nor the reports of


the Boundary Commissions have yet been received. I find it absolutely extraordinary that everybody is talking as though my right hon. Friend had received the reports of the Boundary Commissions. They have not yet been received.

Sir C. Black: The hon. Gentleman is putting words into my mouth that I have never used. I made it perfectly clear that I was making no imputation of bad faith against the Home Secretary or against the Government. I do not understand why heat has been engendered about something which I have not said.

Mr. Rees: The hon. Member proposes a Bill which alters the present procedures and says that no imputation is being made, but offers no evidence for a change. The evidence from past years shows that the Labour Party carries out its statutory obligations. With respect to the hon. Member, whom I respect in many other ways, this seems to be an effort on behalf of the Conservative Central Office. What I heard just now was that the Conservative Central Office has decided that redistribution is in the Conservatives' favour.

Mr. Victor Goodhew: The hon. Gentleman made the point that the reports have not yet been received and said that my hon. Friend was implying that they had been received and that there had been some hanky-panky. However, the Home Secretary said quite clearly, and I have his words before me, that the Boundary Commission was not required to report until November, 1969, although it was expected to report much sooner. There is no point in the hon. Gentleman saying that the Commissions have not yet reported.

Mr. Rees: I find it interesting to hear that they are expected to report shortly. I wonder where the hon. Gentleman, any hon. Gentleman, got that advice. It would be of great value to the Home Office to know.

Mr. Buck: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that other hon. Members wish to take part in the debate.

Mr. Buck: It was suggested in The Times that this was likely. Perhaps

the hon. Gentleman will confirm whether the Commissions are likely to report in the spring. Will he give the first assurance for which I asked, that the Royal Commissions on Local Government will not be used as a reason for delaying decisions?

Mr. Rees: I gather from my brief experience that it is not the practice to comment in the House on comment in newspapers, however distinguished?

Mr. Buck: Really?

Mr. Rees: I have already made the point that the reports on Local Government will be received later in the year, and they will be a factor to be taken into account, as my right hon. Friend stated.
The position is that we have not yet received the reports of the Boundary Commissions. If hon. Members opposite are expecting me this afternoon to announce the Government's intentions on the Boundary Commission's reports, not yet received, they are asking for the impossible. The Government propose to consider the recommendations and reach their conclusions on them in the light of circumstances when the reports are received.
The matter would then be in the hands of Parliament, and I remind the House that, under Section 3(5) of the 1949 Act, if a draft Order is rejected by either House, or withdrawn by leave of either House, the Secretary of State may amend the draft and lay an amended draft. Accordingly, the question of the period between the submission of a Boundary Commission report and the implementation of changes in constituency boundaries depends to some extent on Parliament itself.
The effect of Section 3 of the Interpretation Act, 1889 would be that the period of two months—or three months: the hon. Gentleman said that he would make it a little longer if necessary, but we will stick to two for this argument—would be two calendar months and not two months of Parliamentary time. It is not inconceivable that a Boundary Commission could report just before a Dissolution. Under the proposed time limit, there would be precious little time after a General Election to consider the recommendations and bring the reports


and draft Orders before Parliament. Moreover, with a period of two calendar months, there could be some technical difficulties if the reports and draft Orders had to be presented to Parliament by a certain date which happened to fall in a Parliamentary recess.
The Government's view is that the existing words "as soon as may be" in Section 2(5) of the 1949 Act are the most appropriate. They were no doubt wisely chosen by those responsible for their inclusion first of all in the 1944 Act. The words take into account the fact that the amount of work flowing from the recommendations in a report can vary according to the magnitude of the alterations recommended. For example, action could be taken fairly quickly or. an interim report under Section 2(3) which recommended only minor alterations of particular constituency boundaries to bring them into line with altered local government boundaries, but a great deal of work might be necessary following a general review of all constituencies, because many alterations might have to be made.
The provisional recommendations of the English Commission which have been published locally in the constituencies affected over the past two or three years seem to show that many changes of constituency boundaries would flow from the final recommendations of the Commission. The Government think it right that they should have time to consider the Commission's final recommendations thoroughly before bringing them before Parliament. In their view, the present law recognises their right to do this and they cannot accept the Amendment proposed in the Bill.
It is perhaps not inappropriate for me to end by saying that Bills of this nature are normally Government Measures preceded by consultations between the parties. The hon. Member for Wimbledon would no doubt take the view that such consultations are difficult for a private Member. Perhaps so, but that makes it even more clear that the Bill's purpose is to get the Government to say what they propose to do about the Boundary Commissions' reports before they have received them. The Government propose to examine the reports thoroughly when they are submitted. Accordingly, they

oppose the amendment of the law which the Bill seeks to make and advise the House to reject it. I can only repeat the words of my right hon. Friend on 13tn February when, speaking of the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) he said:
The right hon. and learned Gentleman may be well aware that I am aware of my statutory obligations."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th February, 1969; Vol. 777, c. 1544.]

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: rose——

Mr. Goodhew: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Roberts.

Mr. Goodhew: indicated dissent.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have called two Members of the Opposition, and I am now calling the second Member from the Government side.

3.44 p.m.

Mr. Roberts: I deplored the political remarks made by the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) in introducing the Bill. The Bill is concerned basically with the democratic process. The hon Member was concerned that, because of the present rapid changes in population, it was important that certain electoral changes took place so as to maintain, as far as possible, the democratic character of our elections. But I have a horrible suspicion that the results even of these Boundary Commissions will not basically further this democratic procedure.
Hon. Members opposite have mentioned particularly constituencies like Billericay, with an electorate of 109,000, and, on the other hand, Ladywood, with about 19,000. What they have not mentioned is that there are in Britain constituencies like Merionethshire with an electorate of 25,000, Caithness and Sutherland with 26,000, and Orkney and Shetland with about 24,000. Even after the proposed redistribution, that type of constituency would remain.
Effectively, therefore, there would be many English constituencies with a figure of nearer 50,000, but in Wales and Scotland there would remain abnormally small constituencies in terms of numbers. I accept that there may be good geographical argument for those constituencies, and I will return to this presently. Basically, however, what would be left


after the redistribution is the fact that, in some senses, some Welshmen are equivalent to two Englishmen. Whereas some of us would never quibble with that fact, some of us, perhaps, have doubts whether one Scotsman is equivalent to two Englishmen. Clearly, therefore, it cannot be said that this redistribution is the ultimate answer to the problem of maintaining the democratic nature of the electorate.

Mr. Buck: Would not the hon. Member agree, however, that it is far more important than the Parliament (No. 2) Bill, for example, in maintaining the democratic process?

Mr. Roberts: I would not hesitate, perhaps, to agree on that point. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has said——

Mr. R. W. Brown: In discussing the democratic process, will not my hon. Friend remind the House of the time in 1963 when the City of London, the most appalling rotten borough in the business, was left as a deliberate attempt by the Conservatives to retain it? This is an example of talking about democratic processes in the House but the Tory Party outside doing the exact reverse.

Mr. Roberts: I quite agree with my hon. Friend's sentiments. We have only to look across the water to the position in Northern Ireland if we want to extend this discussion on the democratic process.
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has referred to the great changes which are taking place. There is the problem of the redistribution of local government boundaries. There is the question of the 3 million-plus—we are not certain exactly how many—young voters who will be coming on to the electoral register. As the hon. Member for Wimbledon mentioned, the nature of population movements is far more complex than ever before. We can, therefore, say that the questions of Parliamentary boundaries and electoral size in general are becoming more and more complex.
It seems to me, therefore, that the arguments are not in favour of the Bill, which would precipitate the action of my hon. Friend the Minister, but are rather

in favour of greater delay and consideration. The time is, perhaps, reasonable for us now to look at the whole problem of constituencies and the electoral process. It may be that something more is required than merely changing boundaries in the way proposed.
It has been suggested that we should have multiple representation. Certainly it would overcome some of the problems of small constituencies in Wales and Scotland because we could have two hon. Members for larger, less populated areas and perhaps three hon. Members for more compact, highly populated urban areas, and the same might apply to parts of England. This would provide something nearer the statistical type of democracy which hon. Gentlemen opposite are seeking, because it would be as near as one could get to the "one man one vote" principle.

The CLERK ASSISTANT at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. SPEAKER.

Whereupon Mr. SYDNEY IRVING, The CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS, took the Chair as DEPUTY SPEAKER, pursuant to the Standing Order.

3.52 p.m.

Mr. Victor Goodhew: I hope that the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Gwilym Roberts) will forgive me if I do not pursue him into the fastnesses of Wales and Scotland in an attempt to weigh up the values of the various nationalities. He gave away the game when he acknowledged that there were geographical conditions which might make a difference to the electoral figures.

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that the latter part of my argument was designed to point out that by having multiple representation we should in the end secure a system whereby every man's vote would elect an equivalent part of an hon. Member, which is what I believe hon. Gentlemen are trying to achieve?

Mr. Goodhew: The hon. Gentleman is making the whole thing unnecessarily complicated.
The Minister suggested that this was a case for a Government Bill after consultation between the two parties. In


view of the experience of the House on the Parliament (No. 2) Bill, over which, we gather, there was consultation between the two Front Benches, is the Minister's suggestion a good one? Hon. Members are finding the results of that consultation singularly unacceptable in the face of the Government's trying to force through the Measure against the wish of the House as a whole.
The Minister then suggested that the Labour Party had redistributed itself out of office in 1951. That is a doubtful proposition. Rather than placing a halo over his head for his party having taken that sort of action, and instead of making the public wait the statutory time, he should urge his colleagues to go to the country now; and then we shall all be able to judge the result.

Mr. Bernard Braine: I must correct an impression which the Minister gave earlier. The redistribution took place not in the Parliament of 1950–51 but prior to the 1950 election, and that election was won by the Labour Party. Thus, the redistribution did not have an adverse effect on hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Mr. Goodhew: I thank my hon. Friend for reinforcing my remarks about the Minister's earlier proposition.
The Government also take the view that my hon. Friend's suggestion of two months is not satisfactory because of the time that would be needed for printing and so on. That is no ground for rejecting the Bill. My hon. Friend made it clear that he was not wedded to the period of two months. In any event, the Minister did not say what he thought the period should be. Does he think it should be three or four months?

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I said that it should remain as soon as maybe, which is even better.

Mr. Goodhew: I will come to that. When I was asked to be a sponsor of the Bill and I looked into the matter, I was astonished to find that the present situation rested on an expression so vague and meaningless as "as soon as may be", which can mean whatever one wishes it to mean, or nothing at all.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: Is the view that has just been expressed the considered view of the Opposition?

Mr. Goodhew: The hon. Gentleman cannot hold me responsible for my entire party, any more than he speaks for his whole party on matters like the Parliament (No. 2) Bill. I speak for myself, and I find the expression "as soon as may be" vague and woolly. It suits the hon. Gentleman at the moment to continue with such a phrase, and I will tell him why in a moment. I regard it as being quite unacceptable, whichever party is in power, that there should be the possibility of delay. My hon. Friend was taking a non-party line on this, and I agree with him.
During the last 15 years since the boundaries have been redrawn there have been enormous changes in Hertfordshire and Essex, caused by the large influx of people from London to the new towns. This has completely thrown out of balance the way in which the constituency boundaries have been drawn. In any event, however quickly the Government get on to issuing the Order in Council, we shall always be a bit behind the times. Two years have probably elapsed since the Boundary Commission made its proposals for Hertfordshire and for Essex, and there have been public inquiries——

Mr. Merlyn Rees: This is an interesting point. The hon. Gentleman is saying that the Government are allowed to bring in modifications to take into account changes since the earlier considerations.

Mr. Goodhew: I am not objecting to the Government bringing in modifications. I am saying that the time required should be quantified. I may come to him later to ask for modifications of certain constituencies where there is dissatisfaction with the proposals which have been made.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: This all takes time, after the report has been received; that is the point.

Mr. Goodhew: Yes, it all takes time, and it may be that the time should be tied to the date on which the modifications have been made, but it is clear that the vague phrase "as soon as may be" allows too much room for unattractive manoeuvre.
If we know that the proposition which will be put to the House will be on figures


which are already two years out of date, it is absurd to allow that position to drift on. It may be that a Government may not be making allowance for the changes which have since taken place and are working on the figures which they have before them. It is a question of how long it takes to decide the modifications.

Mr. R. W. Brown: The hon. Gentleman must recognise that the most important factor is the coming into effect of votes at 18. This represents an enormous change of pattern. Any Government would have to take into account the distribution of 3½ million 18-year-olds and its impact on certain areas. It must obviously take far longer than two months to deal with it.

Mr. Goodhew: The hon. Gentleman is saying what I expected to hear from the other side, and making any excuse for delay in coming to a decision. I dare say he will find that the 18-year-olds will not greatly affect the position. They are probably fairly evenly spread throughout the country and will not make much difference to the size of the constituencies.

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: The case being made out by the hon. Gentleman is the case that I was trying to put forward, that the problem is becoming more and more complex, and now is the time when the Government should look at the whole problem of the electoral process to see how it can be made more democratic.

Mr. Goodhew: That is almost another speech, rather than an intervention. My point is that, over and over again, the Government——

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Friday, 18th April.

FEUDAL REFORM (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS (PROTECTION OF SUB-SCRIBERS) BILL

Order for the Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

BRITISH STANDARD TIME ACT (REPEAL) BILL

Order for the Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday, 18th April.

PROTECTION FROM DOGS BILL

Order for the Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

PARLIAMENT (No. 3) BILL

Orders for the Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

EXPANSION OF NEW TOWNS (REFERENDUM) BILL

Order for the Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION AND BENEFIT (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for the Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

NATIONAL INSURANCE (INDUS-TRIAL INJURIES) (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for the Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

BORDERS DEVELOPMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for the Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

RENT ACT 1968 (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

LIVE HARE COURSING (ABOLITION) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

HIGHWAYS (STRAYING ANIMALS) (No. 2) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

ORGAN TRANSPLANTS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Secon Reading deferred till Friday. 2nd May.

PARLIAMENT (No. 5) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ACT 1876 (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

ROAD TRAFFIC (INSURANCE) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

BETTERMENT LEVY (SOUTH EAST ESSEX)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. loan L. Evans.]

4.2 p.m.

Mr. Bernard Braine: I wish to draw attention to the grievances of certain of my constituents who, as I shall show, have suffered hardship and distress as a consequence of the working of the Land Commission Act. These cases are not unique, and, to my certain knowledge, there are more of them all over the country.
Let me make two comments at the outset. First, whatever any of us may think about the setting up of the Land Commission and the introduction of the so-called betterment levy on all transactions in land, I am referring here only


to one category of cases; namely, those where a person has built a home for himself on land which he has received as a gift from a relative, or which has been given on payment of a nominal sum, or where not a penny of profit has been made out of the transaction.
When the Land Commission was set up, we were told that one of its two main purposes was to make land cheaper and, therefore, to make houses cheaper. Yet, for some people, to the cost of building a home there is now added a levy of several hundred £s for the privilege of doing so. The money extracted in this way is a new and oppressive form of taxation which makes houses that much more expensive.
Secondly, the cases which I shall cite are those where the provision of a remedy does not require any Amendment of the law. It requires merely a decision on the part of the Minister to use powers which Parliament has already given to him.
So that the matter may be fairly judged, let me briefly detail the circumstances in each of these three cases.
The first concerns a Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald of Canvey Island, a young couple in their early twenties. Mr. Fitzgerald is a bricklayer. I have known his wife since her childhood. Her grandmother, who had brought her up almost from birth, gave the young couple a piece of land next door, without which they could not possibly have afforded to build a house of their own. The land was in fact a wedding present. No money passed in respect of the conveyance and no one made a profit out of it. Yet no sooner was the house completed than the Land Commission sent them a demand for £400, subsequently reduced to £304.
Mrs. Fitzgerald wrote to the Commission last year, saying:
John, my husband, is 23 and I am 22 and we were married on Boxing Day. To give us the chance of a home of our own we were given part of a garden upon which John built our bungalow himself, and for which we were lucky enough to obtain a £3,000 mortgage from the local council.
John is a bricklayer and myself, until recently, worked as a typist. I say this to give you some idea of our earnings. Out of this money we not only have our mortgage, rates, etc., but we now have £180 for road charges. With what little money that we have left, we are gradually decorating our

bungalow, and hope soon to buy some carpets.
I have recently left work, as we will be having a baby in October, and so you see the idea of paying you £304, plus 17s. 6d. plus Is. 3d. a day for something we already own, is rather difficult to say the least.
Mrs. Fitzgerald's grandmother, Mrs. Manthorp, put it more bluntly. In a letter to me she said:
I am hopping mad…to learn that my granddaughter is to be fleeced by the Government of over £300 because she had the cheek to build a bungalow on land I gave them. It is a swindle.
The second case is that of Mr. and Mrs. Dady. The only difference here is that this young couple already had a home of their own, but moved to a new one that they built on land conveyed to them for a nominal sum by Mrs. Dady's elderly mother. The purpose was to enable Mrs. Dady to be more easily to hand to help her mother who lived alone.
In this case the building society advised Mr. Dady, that, if he wanted a mortgage, he would have to acquire the freehold of the land. Accordingly, his mother-in-law sold it to him for the nominal sum of £50.
No sooner was the house built than the Land Commission demanded a levy of £318. Like the Fitzgeralds, the Dadys had exhausted their small savings in building their new home, had taken on a new mortgage, and so to pay the levy caused them acute hardship. The irony of it was that they were told subsequently that, if they had not paid the nominal £50 and the land had been conveyed as a gift, they could have been exempted from payment of the levy. But if this is so, it is difficult to understand why the Fitzgeralds were not exempt from the start.
I raised both these cases with the Minister of Housing and Local Government. I told him that tax was being levied in circumstances which Parliament could never have envisaged when the Land Commission Bill was going through. I said that if I had encountered such cases, there were probably hundreds of others up and down the country where the Commission was making the lives of young married couples utterly miserable. Surely he was going to do something about it.
The only reply I got from his Parliamentary Secretary, the hon. Member for


Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Skeffington), was that if financial hardship was being caused the Commission would be prepared to accept payment by instalments, but that until this had been arranged interest would be charged on the debt. The Parliamentary Secretary had a very short memory, and I will return to his part in this shabby business a little later.
The third case is that of Mrs. Shillum, a 69-year old-widow, who lives with her 83-year-old sister, also on Canvey Island. Their joint income is the princely sum of £9 a week.
Mrs. Shillum sold her home for £6,000 to clear debts due to be met out of her late husband's estate. Out of the residue she had built for herself a small bungalow costing about £2,000. But she had to meet road charges of £600, and so she was left with hardly any capital at all.
The Land Commission was quick off the mark. It promptly presented her with a demand for payment of £1,575. Needless to say, she has no hope whatever of paying this vicious tax and, at her age, is never likely to be able to earn the money to do so. As a consequence, she has been made ill with worry.
I knew her husband quite well. He was a councillor and served the community ably. It is disgraceful that his widow, or for that matter any widow who has worked hard all her life, should have to face a burden and an anxiety of this kind in the autumn of her years.
I raised this case with the right hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Robinson) who, in the meantime, had taken over responsibility for these matters. I told him that in causing acute hardship to people who could least afford to bear it, such as these young married couples and elderly widows, the Land Commission was behaving in a way which Parliament was told would not happen. Indeed, it was precisely because the Government were warned during the debates on the Bill that hardship might result that the Minister was given power in section 63 to lay an Order directing that in such cases no levy shall be charged. But the Minister did not say anything about that in his letter to me. All he would say was that he was not prepared to amend the

law, particularly at this early stage in its operation.
"At this stage", when his "In" tray must be overflowing with examples of this kind. He told me that the situation I had revealed was to be found more frequently in my constituency than in most. This was an extraordinary observation, but if it is true there may well be a special reason, for in October, 1965, that is before the Land Commission came into being his Parliamentary Secretary visited my constituency. The hon. Gentleman was reported in the News Review, a local newspaper—and I have sent the right hon. Gentleman a copy—to have given the South East Essex Labour Party a talk on the work of the proposed Land Commission.
A local councillor asked him:
whether a plot of land next to a building would escape levy. Mr. Skeffington replied that if someone who owned the land wished to use it for themselves or, say, for their son and daughter there would be no levy. But if it was sold to a builder as a business deal it would then be levied. But these people are not speculators, he said, and we do not wish to catch them. We would allow one house only, but no more.
The Fitzgeralds, the Dadys and scores more like them who read the local paper would have been excused for thinking that the hon. Gentleman's words meant that they would not be liable to levy. I told the right hon. Gentleman that there is a strong moral case for taking the necessary action to ensure that the Parliamentary Secretary's clear pledge is honoured, and I repeat that now. In any event, by what moral right does the Minister tax people, not on a profit they have made, but on one that the Commission deem they might make at some unspecified date in the future?
The Minister's suggestion that I have more than my fair share of these cases is not borne out by the facts. It is true that my post yesterday brought me a fresh case from my constituency, that of Mr. Weston of Manor Road, Thundersley, who gave two plots adjoining his house to two daughters. Building has started, and although according to the right hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) this sort of case would be exempt, the Commission has served notice that levy is payable. However, my attention has been drawn to similar cases all over the country. There is, for example, the


case of the old retired Nottinghamshire miner whose son gave him a piece of land alongside his own home. Now that he is building his retirement cottage the Commission is demanding £400. His wife wrote to me:
My husband has been an underground coal miner for over 50 years, we have never been unemployed, we have worked hard all the time. I would not like you to put our names in print as we feel sort of humiliated. We have not the money to meet it at the moment, we shall probably have to change our plans. Do you not think this is a mean and miserable act for old people?
Let the Minister also ponder over a letter I received from Major Sir Hereward Wake of Northampton which raises another aspect of this appalling bureaucratic tyranny. He said:
Last year, in an effort to assist a local Baptist minister—with extremely limited private means—I gave him a corner of a field adjoining the village on which he was able, with the help of a mortgage, and some help from me, to build himself a modest house.
I was shocked to receive a Betterment Levy assessment for £456 16s. which I was advised, under the law, I had to pay—and have done so.
Is this the Government's way of encouraging landowners to provide houses for people?
Does not the right hon. Gentleman see that his failure to act in these cases is not only causing misery and frustration to people who for the most part ask nothing from the all-powerful State, but is also discouraging generosity and self-help by putting a premium on meanness?
So far the right hon. Gentleman has given no sign that he will take any such action. Indeed, he told me on 21st February that he could not promise any new legislation, and in dismissing my representations put forward an argument of great callousness—which was totally out of character—and which I am sure that on reflection he wished he had not used. In acknowledging that the cases I had cited were causing hardship he said:
it must be admitted that the difficulty is really due to the developers having insufficient means both to build their houses and to pay the levy due on the development value.
Developers indeed! To some that is a dirty word. Did the Minister mean it as such in reference to my constituents? To Mr. Fitzgerald, the young bricklayer, who had built his house with his own

hands? To Mrs. Shillum, the elderly widow? I bitterly resent his implication, namely, that poorer members of the community who have been fortunate enough to secure a piece of land from a relative or a well-wisher ought not to have the temerity to build themselves a house if they cannot also pay the Levy—this coming from a Minister who said recently that in a few years the housing shortage will be over.
If the Minister chooses, he can put this matter right now without legislation. Even the Land Commission has power to vary the time and manner of payment of levy in an individual case. But—much more to the point—the Minister, by making an order under Section 63 of the Act, can direct that no levy be charged in certain specified circumstances.
The right hon. Member for Sunderland, North, who was the Minister who piloted the Bill through Parliament, is on record as having said in the last few days that the Commission has power to suspend levies and interest indefinitely in cases of hardship. According to the right hon. Gentleman—and he should know—
the provision is there but the discretion is not being exercised.
It is very much to his credit that he also said that he is disturbed and upset by the situation. This is what we would expect of him. He was also reported in the Press on 10th March as saying that he had interceded on behalf of the Sweeting family who had turned an uncle's barn into a home last year at Danbury. Mr. Sweeting is a £13 a week labourer who spent £500 on the barn and was then served by the Commission with a demand for £900 and interest at the rate of 3s. 9d. a day until the levy was paid. The right hon. Gentleman told the Land Commission that the Sweetings need not pay anything at all and, according to the report, the case was settled.
If this is so, it is quite monstrous that a concession can be made by the Commission in respect of persons for whom the right hon. Gentleman can intercede but not for my constituents who find themselves in the same situation. This is a scandalous state of affairs, and the reason for my raising this matter today is to bring it right out into the open and


demand that the Minister exercises now the powers that he possesses to end this injustice. Surely by now he must realise that Parliament never intended that the law should operate in this heartless way. In the kind of case that I have mentioned, the levy is creating conditions under which some small home owners are being driven to misery and despair. One can even envisage circumstances in which some unfortunate person is driven to desperate measures. If the Minister does not want that on his conscience, let him act quickly. I hope that is what he will tell the House now.

4.17 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey: I intervene briefly on behalf of two of the hon. Gentleman's constituents. I confine myself to this case because the hon. Gentleman invited me to look at this case. I had indeed the pleasure of meeting Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald. As I understand it, the Minister feels unable to do anything in this case because it falls outside the exemption that we provided in the Act for single family dwelling houses. We provided this exemption for an owner building a house for himself or a member of his family on land which he owned at the time of the White Paper. I emphasise that we had the family in mind.
Naturally enough, we have to think only of an adult member of the family when we are thinking of providing a dwelling house. If anyone in Standing Committee had called my attention to the fact that an adult member of the family might be a grandchild I am sure we should have made provision for a grandchild. In fact, we made provision only for sons and daughters, but we construed this as widely as we could. We included adopted children and illegitimate children. I am sure that within the spirit of this exception falls the adult grandchild.
I am delighted that Mrs. Manthorp, the grandmother, in this case is a great-grandmother. I feel that my right hon. Friend should surely look at this case sympathetically and provide for the exceptional case which has arisen. I know of a couple of such cases, and in each case, incidentally, the Minister has suggested that the grandmother should go and live in the house for six months.

I feel that she should not be put to that inconvenience. The simplest thing to do is to say that we are thinking of the family in terms of children and that we include adult grandchildren.
I am surprised that this matter has been under consideration for very nearly a year, and I hope that, now that the hon. Gentleman has raised the question on the Floor of the House, my right hon. Friend will be able to say that he will look sympathetically at it and make provision for the exemption not only of children but of grandchildren, too.

4.20 p.m.

The Minister for Planning and Land (Mr. Kenneth Robinson): I welcome the opportunity to reply to the charge made by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) that the Land Commission Act is causing injustices to people in his constituency and elsewhere. I shall not have time to deal with the glosses which he put on various statements I have made in writing to him and elsewhere, and neither, I think, can I deal with the hyperbole with which he described some of the cases of alleged hardship. But I say at the outset that I am as sensitive as anyone to cases involving genuine financial hardship to individuals. I add only that this is no new phenomenon in taxation matters.
One of my difficulties is in knowing how to deal with the issues raised by the hon. Gentleman and remain within order. I shall try to confine myself to describing once again the job which the Land Commission was established to carry out, a matter which some hon. Members claim they find extremely difficult to understand, despite its basic simplicity.
All land—by which I mean land in the legal sense, including both bare land and land with building on it—has the value of the purpose for which it is at present used. This is the current use value, a term which, though it is taken from the Land Commission Act, is quite explicit and barely qualifies to be called jargon. We all know that when planning permission is granted to put land to a more valuable use, or when the prospect of its being granted can be clearly seen, the value of the land rises. The planning permission is worth something, and often a great deal, in financial terms. It


gives an added value to the land, and that added value—the difference between the current use value and the value with planning permission—is the development value on which the charge to levy is based.
Obviously, not all transactions are as simple as that, and there are a few in which the complications of apportionments and related tenancies, Estate Duty and Capital Gains Tax which the Act so carefully stores up in all its 17 Schedules must be invoked to bring out a just and equitable answer where those factors are involved. But these transactions are a minority, and the complications for which the Act is so widely criticised are seldom, if ever, involved in the type of case of which the hon. Gentleman has spoken today.
At this point, I must express my concern at one of the reasons giving rise to the allegation that the levy is causing hardship and injustice. Most weeks, I receive a number of letters from hon. Members and from the public about the betterment levy, and I am frankly astonished that in so many cases the correspondents claim that they had never heard of the levy till they had spent or decided how to spend the proceeds of their sale. I say that I am astonished and concerned about this because nearly all these people have had some professional advice either on the price they asked for their land or on how to obtain planning permission, or at the time when they conveyed the land. Must one draw the conclusion that all these things go on without levy ever being mentioned? By now, people are entitled to expect to receive advice about the incidence of betterment levy from their professional advisers as a matter of course and should not find themselves taken by surprise when the demand for levy is made. I am, therefore, grateful for the opportunity which this debate gives me to explain the activities of the Land Commission.
There is one other matter on which I should like to put the record straight. That is the much-repeated assertion that the Land Commission Act was not designed to impose a levy in ordinary small transactions but was intended solely as a weapon against unscrupulous land speculators. It is easy to speak in general terms about

unscrupulous land speculators without asking oneself how the Land Commission could decide whether a transaction involves a speculation in land or, on the contrary, is to be regarded as completely meritorious. However, this is hardly relevant since the Land Commission Act was specifically designed to take levy in all cases where there was a realisation of development value. One needs only to look at the six cases of charge to realise that every foreseeable contingency was being taken into account.
Nor is there any mention in the Act that the owner-occupier or any other class of person is exempt from levy. No one reading the debates on the Bill can have any doubt of Parliament's intention, which went far beyond taxing merely the large-scale land speculator.
Not that the Land Commission——

Mr. Braine: rose——

Mr. Robinson: The hon. Gentleman has not left me much time, and my right hon. Friend also spoke, so I shall not give way.
The Land Commission is not failing to catch the large cases, as one might suppose from some of the comments. Cases where the market value is over £10,000 will bring in half the levy estimated to be raised in 1969–70.

Mr. Braine: Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me?

Mr. Robinson: I shall not give way. I have a great deal to say.

Mr. Braine: Why not answer the debate?

Mr. Robinson: I have six minutes left. I am dealing with the suggestion that the hon. Gentleman repeated several times that it it was never Parliament's intention to catch small cases.

Mr. Braine: Does the right hon. Gentleman repudiate the Parliamentary Secretary?

Mr. Robinson: I shall now deal with what the Parliamentary Secretary said. What he said was perfectly true. Many of the cases the hon. Gentleman quoted came within the context of what he said. Anybody who owned land at the time the Parliamentary Secretary was speaking certainly will not attract levy if he


develops that land for himself of his immediate family. In the two cases the hon. Gentleman quoted the land was not owned at that time. He knows perfectly well that those are the facts of the case, and there is no need for him to distort them.
I should like to examine the claim that the levy causes hardship. If that is true, it is because the person called upon to pay the levy has acted without proper advice, or in some cases has chosen to go ahead with what he or she had in mind to do although aware of the provisions of the Act. Betterment levy is exacted only where there has been either a cash profit or gain in the form of a valuable asset. Thus, if proper advice were taken and followed there would always be some gain from which the levy could be met. A close examination of the chief complaints against levy brings me to the conclusion that it is not so much that hardship is created but that some people are less able to relieve their present burdens because they are called on to return some part of the gain created by planning permission which the community exercises.
If a person buys land to develop and pays full market value for it, he will not be called upon to pay levy when he develops, because the price he paid for the land will be taken into account. Levy will have been paid by the vendor. But if he has been given the land or comes by it cheaply, levy will be due. This is a matter which owners of land must appreciate. They could not build on their own land without incurring liability to levy; they cannot under the Act avoid that liability by giving the land to somebody else.
The second category in which we are told hardship or injustice is brought upon the private individual is where land is sold. It may be the owner's own house, part of his garden, or a small plot of land which he happens to own. Assuming that levy is due, it will be due only if the sale has been made at more than 10 per cent. above the current use value of the land.
But more important is the fact that if the value of the house is its value for continued use as a house and not, for example, as a site for a block of flats, no levy will be payable.

Mr. Antony Buck: What about grandchildren?

Mr. Robinson: As my right hon. Friend said, the definition of family was considered and very carefully worked out when the Bill was going through the House.

Mr. Richard Body: Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me?

Mr. Robinson: I shall not give way. I now have 3½ minutes left.
The hon. Gentleman quoted what my right hon. Friend said in an article in The Times a day or two ago. I hope that he has also read the letter in today's issue of The Times from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot), who was responsible for the Land Commission when my right hon. Friend had left the Government. There were statements in his article which I think my right hon. Friend, on reflection, will not wholly agree with.

Mr. Willey: Will my right hon. Friend allow me to intervene on this?

Mr. Robinson: I am sorry. I want to get on the record——

Mr. Willey: My right hon. Friend has referred to me——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Robinson: My right hon. Friend knows perfectly well that the Land Commission has no discretion to waive interest.

Mr. Braine: This is scandalous. The right hon. Gentleman should give way to his right hon. Friend.

Mr. Robinson: The main burden of the hon. Gentleman's speech was to ask what the Land Commission proposes to do about the cases of hardship and injustice he quoted. He made great play with what my right hon. Friend had said.
It has always been open to people charged betterment levy, as the hon. Gentleman knows, to apply for permission to pay by instalments. The Commission has always been able to consider such requests. How the Commission takes payment when it comes to


some agreement with the payer is a matter for the Commission. It is a discretion which it exercises, and I believe that it exercises it reasonably. But it payment is made by instalments, and this includes any temporary postponement of payment of the levy—should that be more appropriate than spreading payments out by a series of equal instalments—interest is chargeable. The Commission has no discretion to waive interest.
Where some misunderstanding has arisen is in relation to the quite separate power in the Act under which regulations can be made by the Minister which may provide that in prescribed circumstances interest shall be waived or reduced by a prescribed amount. This is not a discretionary power for the Commission. It is a power under which, subject to the agreement of the House, the Minister can decide that certain defined categories of levy payer should not pay interest on levy outstanding.

Mr. Body: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Does not this come within the definition of "tedious repetition"? We have had all this again and again in Standing Committee.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There is very little time left.

Mr. Robinson: It is only because there is so much misunderstanding that it is necessary to say these things again.

Mr. Braine: rose——

Mr. Robinson: An example of the waiver of interest cover which I have mentioned is the building of houses for

agricultural workers, where levy is postponed and interest waived as long as the house is occupied by an agricultural worker.
The question has been raised whether the Government will propose new regulations applying to further classes of levy payer or, indeed, amendment of the Act to exempt certain groups of cases. I should be out of order if I discussed changes of legislation on an Adjournment debate, but, as regards individual cases of alleged hardship——

Mr. Braine: rose——

Mr. Robinson: Will the hon. Gentleman contain himself if he wants a reply? As regards individual cases of alleged hardship, I said in the House on 6lh February that I would take up with the Commission any cases that hon. Members raise with me. This I have done. My purpose in so doing is to keep under review the operation of the levy. The Commission has been going less than two years. A great part of that period was covered by the so-called "interim" period, and it is only in recent weeks and months that the full operation of the Act could have been seen functioning. I am keeping it under review——

The Question having been proposed after Four o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-eight minutes to Five o'clock.